Comments on: [Fake World] Real-World Math Proves Tough To Pin Down

By: SUSAN BOLLARD

SUSAN BOLLARD — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:24:18 +0000

I’m not a Maths Teacher, have been given a year 8 class to teach percentages to and surprisingly they seem to have understood and loved the work. “This is the best Maths ever, you can see how it works”, was one comment.Each student created a virtual shop with internet images and selected images of ten products.
The choice, fashion, sport or home wares.
Each product was given a wholesale price by the students and then had to be marked up by % to give a sale price. A few test goes of adding percentages because of new season stock or a franchise decision and they had the idea.
Then the “test” it was SALE time. I put together a number of photos from the local shopping centre of store windows with signs of % off. We worked through images of 8 stores taking % of a selected item at each new image. YES everyone got it right.
Now we have moved on to using a credit card for the purchases and looking at the percentage interest.
The result, engagement, enthusiasm, understanding of the concepts. Their comments, it didn’t even seem like we had to do maths. As a non Maths Teacher we covered a lot of ground in many areas in just a few lessons. Real World Maths?

By: Howard Phillips

Howard Phillips — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 13:29:46 +0000

Hello Dan. Try this for REAL WORLD. It is from a box of Quaker Whole Hearts cereal –

*As a daily part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, 3g of soluble fiber from oats as in Quaker Whole Hearts can help lower cholesterol, which may reduce the risk of heart disease. This product provides .75g per serving.

By: The Best Laid Plans…, “Real World” Math, and 3rd Grade Algebra | The Math Lab @ Room 27

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 01:04:51 +0000

[…] Meyer recently discussedÂ ”real world” math on his blog. He gave a problem and asked which of 3 scenarios would […]

By: Intensives Week: Fractal Geometry! | 17GoldenFish

Intensives Week: Fractal Geometry! | 17GoldenFish — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 21:57:01 +0000

[…] problem “real world.” Â Dan Meyer has distilled some of the more interesting arguments HERE. Â I think that Fractals make for “real world” math study within multiple definitions. […]

By: Math without Context? | MathLab

Math without Context? | MathLab — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 15:39:24 +0000

[…] [Fake World] Real-World Math Proves Tough To Pin Down by Dan Meyer and Changing the Unknown by Graham Fletcher. […]

By: Holly Sims

Holly Sims — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 06:21:19 +0000

Thank you for writing such a wonderful thought-provoking post. I am so pleased to have found your blog. As a elementary school teacher of 10 years, currently working at LAUSD, the pressure that is placed on teachers to create lesson plans that students find to be uninteresting for the sake of preparing for standardized tests, is ultimately harmful to the student. I love the idea of creating “life” questions instead of “math” questions, and having math problems that relate to the student’s world instead of the “real” world. My students often sarcastically ask me how math problems can be applied to the real world, and I have always thought of coming up with real world math examples to be the greatest tool for engaging students in learning math. This post has challenged me to go beyond the idea of the real world problem, and take the “their” world problem into the classroom.

By: Would the real “real world” please stand up. | Noble Math

Would the real “real world” please stand up. | Noble Math — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:30:02 +0000

[…] really appreciate Dan Meyer’s post on real world vs fake world and getting the MTBOS to help define what makes a problem “real world.” Â He put a call out to Mathalicious (specifically), […]

By: Kevin Hall

Kevin Hall — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:27:12 +0000

"Real-world" is less important than "interesting"...I got it. But I think too many comments here suggest that there are no universal principles underlying what people find intriguing or puzzling; that it's all relative; that it's all about whether the activity is connected to their world. My guess is that there are some universals. For example, this new book by a cognitive scientist examines the universals of humor--what goes on in the brain when people find something funny. It can't be understood in a completely reductionist perspective, but there are universals. I think a similar analysis could be performed for puzzlement.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 18:20:23 +0000

I think your “high abstraction” version illustrates well what can go wrong with that kind of thing.

However, I think the formatting is making it worse. I believe I read something from you years ago on this site about what a benefit whitespace is for students processing a task. I’ve always found that to be true myself.

Consider this treatment http://i.imgur.com/DQoUZvI.png taht I just put together. It is similarly high-abstraction, but it still uses some style elements to make it easier for the reader to engage. I also purposely asked a question, which I feel the high abstraction type tasks usually do, but I didn’t try to ask *all* the questions.

By: Josh Bobbitt

Josh Bobbitt — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:29:32 +0000

“And for the sake of interesting your students in mathematics, it’s more important to know their world.” In my experience this is just absolutely THE thing.