By Charles Larrieu Casias
One of the cool things about math is that it can provide powerful new ways of seeing the world. Just for fun, I want you to open up this lesson from the grade 8 student text. Take a quick skim. What do you notice? What do you wonder?
When writing this lesson, I was guided by a few key questions:
- To paraphrase Dan Meyer: If I want arithmetic with scientific notation to be the aspirin, then how do I create the headache?
- What are some weird, silly comparisons involving really large numbers?
- Here, towards the end of 8th grade, what should students be doing to transition towards the high school mathematical modeling cycle?
Continue reading “Sometimes the Real World Is Overrated: The Joy of Silly Applications”