Comments on: [Pseudocontext Saturdays] Fish Tank

By: Maths at the Science Museum – Glimpses of Infinity, Reminders of Reality

Maths at the Science Museum – Glimpses of Infinity, Reminders of Reality — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 19:37:13 +0000

[…] have been loving Dan Meyer’s hilarious Pseudo-Context Game (every Saturday he posts a photo from a textbook and asks his readership to guess the maths the […]

By: [Pseudocontext Saturdays] Tornado! – dy/dan

[Pseudocontext Saturdays] Tornado! – dy/dan — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 16:20:05 +0000

[…] First: […]

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 03:31:58 +0000

In reply to Trevor. Hi Trevor, thanks for the comment. Generally when it comes to application problems, I try to inoculate pseudocontext by asking myself, "Given this context, would a normal human being ask wonder this (mathematical) question?" And if so, then, "Given this question, would a normal human being use this (mathematical) method to answer it?" If the answer is yes for both, then we have a promising task.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 03:17:48 +0000

In reply to William Carey. Featured this one up top.

By: Anna scholl

Anna scholl — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 01:52:17 +0000

I voted polynomials thinking about swimming paths of fish.

In part because I had students use an aquarium theme for a functions project and that was their polynomial context.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 19:02:54 +0000

Hey everyone, I am a pre-service teacher in Michigan, and I found this blog from a list of recommended edubloggers. I just wanted to hop on the comments and tell you how awesome I think this thread/game is.

I am relatively new to teaching (I have taught chemistry in the past and have tutored a lot of high school math), but I am glad to see that I am not the only one who feels that “real world examples” of math problems miss the mark.

I am curious you all write your own “real world” problems that are more reasonable, or if you discuss this at all with your students? As a tutor, I pointed it out when the student was frustrated with the problem, but if the student didn’t struggle, I let them do the problem without interruption.

By: William Carey

William Carey — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 13:07:40 +0000

One motif in pseudocontextual questions seems to be treating as a variable things that, you know, *don’t vary*. I have a funny video playing in my mind of some surprised fish watching the volume of their tank become negative. But happily the volume of that tank is not varying, inasmuch as it’s sides are made of glass.

By: Max Goldstein

Max Goldstein — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 04:36:05 +0000

What’s maddening is that polynomial is completely arbitrary. It doesn’t relate to a property of the tank in the way that, say, SA = 2ab + 2ac + 2bc does. (If there IS some useful interpretation of the factored version, it would be really useful to point that out!)

By: Bowen Kerins

Bowen Kerins — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 03:40:08 +0000

By the way, question (c) isn’t even answerable. The factoring gives (x-1)(x-2)(x+5), and then we’re told the volume is 3 ft^3. So … does that mean solving (x-1)(x-2)(x+5) = 3, then picking off the three dimensions from the pieces (x-1), (x-2), and (x+5)?

NO, because they told us the length is x! That means the other dimensions are … uhh … god how broken and stupid is this.

The legit context for this would be Snell’s Law and the actual location of a fish relative to the position we think it is.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:09:25 +0000

In reply to Dan.

Although, in truth, having a physical application ought not be the delineating factor for maths to be meaningful.

No one will ever find me making the counterargument, that math must have a physical application to be meaningful. The implicit argument of this series is that if you're going to shoot for a physical application, you'd better not miss.