I’m muddling through a WCYDWT unit on modeling right now and I’m short on data. If you know of a curve that’s preceded by a recommended speed sign, would you copy the link from Google Maps and paste it into the comments. Obliged.

This is a total gamechanger:

If I call a business or a government agency and represent myself as a math teacher who is curious about their work, they will spend a not-insignificant amount of time answering any question I have.

I’m 100% so far on, like, six attempts. I don’t know why I never tried this before.

BTW:

Running list of examples that have made it to this blog:

1. [WCYDWT] Pure Performance. I wanted to know the speed of the car in the video so I e-mailed the agency representing the director who then put me in touch with the visual effects supervisor.
2. [It Got Away] Vermont License Plates. I called the Vermont DMV and received a trove of information about license plate issuance, including the combinations of letters they don’t allow.
3. [It Got Away] Ladder Spreaders. I called Werner Ladder Co. and spoke to an engineer who gave me the skinny on ladder construction.
4. Partial Product. The corporate grocery store told me no way that’d let me take photos on their counter so I head over to the local grocery store on the corner where the grocer, after we worked through our language barrier, let me set up my problem.
5. Guggenheim. I called the Guggenheim’s public relations department, told them I thought Hans Peter Feldman’s exhibit was an excellent application of math and I wanted my students to experience it. I asked them for the blueprints to that room and they sent them. They told me I couldn’t pass them around, though, a request I’ll honor even though it bums me out.

I’m the guest on Classroom 2.0’s webcast tomorrow, 11/6, at 9:00AM Pacific / 12:00PM Eastern. I’ll be running through a lot of new material, including a new WCYDWT problem I’m really proud of, and all of the above could benefit from your criticism. So bring the heat. I hope to see you there.

BTW: If you’d like to watch it online, Blip.TV has you covered. If you’d like to watch it on your iThing, iTunes has you covered.

My work at Google last year just shipped. Four of us wrapped our heads around “computational thinking,” an approach to problem solving common to computer programmers (more here), and tried to adapt it to the California high school math and science standards. This felt, at times, like tying Al Roker and Usain Bolt together at the ankle and forcing them to compete in a three-legged race. Other times, they played well together.

Near as I can tell, of the sixty-or-so modules listed, only one of them – “Roots of an Equation” – is mine. I always admired Google’s lack of sentiment in deciding when to invest itself and when to divest itself. Still it’s strange to see a year of work reduced to a single entry in a long list. I’ll be interested to see where the project goes from here.

Ben Blum-Smith submits the quintessential teacher-review of Waiting for Superman:

Where did you think great teachers come from? That they spring fully formed from the head of Zeus? Just about everybody who’s an accomplished teacher used to be an ineffective teacher, and as the maker of a documentary about first year teachers, I’m totally confused that you don’t seem to understand this. If you want to talk about great teachers, but don’t have anything to say about the conditions under which teachers become great, you are at a different stadium than where the game is happening.