Earth Day – Plastic Straws Math Activity

How many straws are used in the United States each day? If they were connected, would they wrap around the earth at the Equator? In one year, would the length of straws reach the moon? How many times? What is the volume of this plastic for one year? How deep would it be on a football field?

This activity was written for middle and high school math teachers and their students.
In this blog below you will see the Student Activity followed by the Teachers Notes and Solutions. Both of these are available to be downloaded in pdf from this link:                             Plastic Straw Activity

The solutions were done with a TI-84 CE but could also be done with a TI-84 or TI-Nspire. We hope this provides a good mathematics lesson along with  social awareness for the environment.

Video about this activity

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US Opioid Overdose Activity

Mathematical Modeling and Social Awareness Activity for Grades 8 and above.

This activity was created for two purposes: as a genuine real-world mathematical analysis of data activity and to create social awareness of issues that are confronting many people in the United States.

Click here to go to the website that contains all the materials.  Obtain all the files for the TI-84, TI-84 CE, and TI-Nspire: student pdf’s, teacher pdf’s, 84 program, TI-Nspire document.
Click here to view a two-minute video from the New York Times explaining the opioid crisis.

The following is the Teacher’s Notes of the activity for the TI-84 and TI-84 CE. It is very similar to the activity for TI-Nspire.

 

 

 

New data from 2016:

Unintentional Drug Overdoses Ohio Mathematical Modeling and Awareness (for Grades 8 and above)

This activity was created for two purposes: as a genuine real-world mathematical analysis of data activity and to create social awareness of issues that are confronting many people in the United States and especially in Ohio.

Click here to obtain all the files for the TI-84, TI-84 CE, and TI-Nspire.  

Click here to view a two-minute video from the New York Times explaining the opioid crisis.

Below are excerpts from the Teacher Notes and Solutions

 

 

Super Bowl LI (51) Scores

This activity can be used at grade 7 or beyond. It can be done with either a TI-83/84 or the TI-Nspire. There are two links below – one for doing the activity with a TI-83/84, and one for doing the activity with TI-Nspire.

Each link contains the student version, the teacher notes, the answer key and other files.

Link to my dropbox with all files to use with a TI-83/84.

Link to my dropbox with all files to use with TI-Nspire.

Link to a short video (3 mins) that explains the activity

Idea: the scores of the first 50 Super Bowl football games will be placed into lists on the calculator. On the TI-83/84, the data is easily placed into the proper lists with the ease of running a supplied program. On the TI-Nspire, the data is already in the tns file. The students are then asked questions about the data and will need to perform either 1 Variable Statistics to answer them, or to create a box plot to answer them. We encourage the use of groups of 4 to do the activity in class. See the Teacher Notes for either calculator.

The Teacher Notes also contains 10 fun trivia facts about the Super Bowl, including how it got its name. Enjoy…

Super Bowl Scores Activity 2016   Student Activity

TI-83/84: Have the program “SUPRBL51” put onto your calculator.  This program will clear all your lists and place the following data into your lists:  L1  Game Number     L2 Winning Score    L3 Losing Score

TI-Nspire: The data is already in the activity.

Use the data to answer the following questions:

1. a. What is the largest winning score?     b. What is the smallest losing score?     c. What is the winning score that occurred the most often?     d. What is the mean of the winning scores?     e. What is the median of the winning scores?

2. a. What is the smallest losing score?     b. What is the largest losing score?     c. What is the losing score that occurred most often?     d. What is the mean of the losing scores?     e. What is the median of the losing scores?

3. a. What is the largest number of total points scored by both teams?     b. What is the smallest number of total points scored by both teams?     c. What is the number of total points that occurred most often?     d. What is the mean of the total points scored?     e. What is the median of the total points scored?

4. a. What is the largest point difference of the scores?     b. What is the smallest point difference of the scores?     c. What is the point difference that occurred most often?     d. What is the mean of the point differences?     e. What is the median of the point differences?

5. Based on your analysis of the data, if you had to pick a final score to the Super Bowl, what score would you pick? And why? Explain.

All answers and step-by-step screen shots of the solutions are supplied in the files in my dropbox (see links above).

10 Questions to ask as class openers (answers supplied in the dropbox links above:

1. What was the average price of a Super Bowl 50 ticket? (compared to the most expensive ticket in 1967)

2. How much does a 30-second commercial cost for the Super Bowl? (compared to 1970)

3. How much money does each player of the winning team win? (losing team?)

4. How many pounds of guacamole will probably be consumed on Super Sunday?

5. How many chicken wings will be consumed on Super Sunday?

6. What Super Bowl had the most TV views?

7. Of the top ten individual television broadcasts ever, all but one are Super Bowls. What was that one TV event?

8. With what numbers have Super Bowls been referred to?

9. There are 4 NFL teams that have never played in a Super Bowl. Who are they?

10. How did the name Super Bowl come about?

See the dropbox links above for the answers. Enjoy…

tom@tomreardon.com

College Football Championship Scores

This activity can be used at grade 7 or beyond through grade 12. It can be done with either a TI-83/84 or the TI-Nspire. There are two links below – one for doing the activity with a TI-83/84, and one for doing the activity with a TI-Nspire.

Each link contains the student version, the teacher notes, the answer key and other files.

Link to my dropbox with all files to use with a TI-83/84.

Link to my dropbox with all files to use with TI-Nspire.

Link to a video that explains the activity.

Idea: the scores of the first 18 championship college football games will be placed into lists on the calculator. On the TI-83/84, the data is easily placed into the proper lists with the ease of running a supplied program. On the TI-Nspire, the data is already in the tns file. The students are then asked questions about the data and will need to perform either 1 Variable Statistics to answer them, or to create a box plot to answer them. We encourage the use of groups of 4 to do the activity in class. See the Teacher Notes for either calculator.

The Teacher Notes also contains 10 fun trivia facts including some about the history of the College Football Champions since 1869. Enjoy…

Number of football championships since 1869:

 

Flowers for Mom

A math graphing gift for Mother’s Day.

This is designed to be used for any student that has:

TI-83/84 (greyscale),          Download the MOMFLR84 program.

TI-84 CE (color),                Download the MOMFLWRS program.

or a TI-Nspire CX.              Download the Flowers_for_Mom.tns activity.

Download the 3-page pdf (see below) for all 3 platforms here.

Epidemic! Prescription Drug Deaths

 

Epidemic! Prescription Drug Deaths

Kate Snow did a report about the Opioid Addiction (painkiller) epidemic in the United States on the Today Show, April 25, 2016. The content of her story was sad but compelling. Over 50 people die every day in the U.S. as a result of prescription drugs.

I decided to create a math activity about the content of her report – hoping that education is the best medicine – to combat this epidemic. This activity can be used in middle grades through high school. The mathematics is mostly percent increase. The purpose of the activity is to do some mathematics with real world data and at the same time become aware of this major problem and what the solutions can be. The last part of the activity is optional – dealing with regression equations in piece wise functions.

Here is the link to the TI-83/84 files and the TI-Npsire files for this activity, along with pdf’s of the student version and the teacher notes and solutions: http://bit.ly/epidemic2016

Link to teachertube video that is an overview of the activity: teacher_tube_epidemic!

The student activity is shown below, followed by the teacher notes and solutions.

TEACHER NOTES AND SOLUTIONS