MISCELLANEOUS MATH LINKS for TEACHERS
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A collection of exercises that test many of the skills from pre-university mathematics that are often called upon in university science, business, engineering, and mathematics courses.
This site includes discussions of infinity, historical information on Archimedes, and an interactive Approximating Pi demonstration.
What is the history of the coordinate plane? Was it invented?
Who named it? Answers to these and other questions about the
history of the coordinate plane are presented by Whitcher in
her latest addition to the Chameleon Graphing unit.
Links grouped by categories: The Four Symmetries, Border or Frieze Patterns, M.C. Escher, Tessellations - How to Make Them, Tessellations - Examples, Wallpaper Patterns - 17 Types, and Miscellaneous
Plus is a British internet magazine intended to introduce readers to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics. It provides feature articles describing applications of maths to real-world problems, games, and puzzles; reviews of popular math books and events; a section describing the math behind some recent news event; a puzzle; mathematical curiosities; and opinions on various math-related topics and news stories. There is a regular interview with someone in a math-related career, showing the wide range of uses of math in the real world. You can subscribe to get email updates every two or three weeks, or just browse or search the site.
Judy Ann Brown presented "Hogwarts Express to Improved Problem Solving and Mathematical Communication" at NCTM's 81st Annual Meeting in April, 2003. Measurement, proportion, probability, graphing, and more were explored through the adventures of Harry Potter and his friends. View the PowerPoint presentation or download the PDF files for the activities.
Lots of links to math lessons and lesson ideas.
Students start out with a review of the essential geometry elements needed to understand the theorem, and progress through clues using Applets and graphics as they build an understanding of the concepts and figure out for themselves how the Pythagorean theorem works. Includes pages on the history of the theorem and applications.
A statistics website created by an Australian high school teacher for teachers of grades 10 - 12. Also of interest if you're taking M 358K!
The Harvard Graduate School of Education provides more than 300 indexed mathematics assessment tasks for grades K-12. You'll also find reports on doing balanced mathematics assessment, a scoring system, and an instrument for implementing the system. Sample tasks include looking at t-shirts in a mirror and finding the scale of seahorses in relation to ostriches.
James Redin's A Brief History of Mechanical Calculators: http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/mechanical1.htm
Mechanical Calculators Album: http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/frame_malbum.htm
Links to animations illustrating various mathematical ideas. Check out Two Classics (visual "proofs" of the formula for the area of a circle and of the Pythagorean Theorem, Unit Circle, and Tom Lehrer.
Learn how to make snowflake patterns and create a five-pointed star. The interactive site offers both a Flash tool and a faster, more fully-featured Java applet that allows you to save the snowflakes to a gallery, as well as links to other sites with instructions for making snowflakes and stars by folding and cutting paper.
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) provides access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites. GEM is a project of the U.S. Department of Education, and is located at the Information Institute of Syracuse at Syracuse University.
You can browse lists organized by subject or keywords; search by subject, keyword, title, or grade level; and limit search results to materials that are free.
Advice about word problems by teacher Denise Carlton for her Algebra classes at Ramona Middle School. The advice is good even for college students! See also Ms. Carlton's entire Algebra I website at http://www.bonita.k12.ca.us/schools/ramona/teachers/carlton/
Geometer's Sketchpad Sketches for Grades 3-8
Click on the 2003 Mathematica Awareness icon above (or on the URL which should show if your browser doesn't show the icon) for lots of links to the subject of Mathematics and Art.
These modules designed for classroom use were developed for the VIEWPOINTS mathematics and art workshops given by Marc Frantz, Indiana University, and Annalisa Crannell, Franklin & Marshall College. Each lesson is available as a PDF file:
- Introduction to Perspective and Space Coordinates
- Perspective by the Numbers
- Vanishing Points and Looking at Art
- Rectangles in One-Point Perspective
- Anamorphic Art
- Fractal Geometry
- Perspective Super-Problems
Links for problems by topics such as distance/rate/time, exponents/roots/scientific notation, functins/graphing, and by story topic. You can also search. Problems are coded for difficulty. At the parent site http://mathforum.org/library/problems/index.html you can find similar lists for other subjects and for middle grades.Geometry Step by Step http://agutie.homestead.com/files/index.html
An animated website, including geometry proofs with animated sketches, Inca geometry, and other features with great visuals.
From others' recommendations and from his own reading as well, Guy Brandenburg has now compiled a list of over 140 math- and science-related books, mostly recent, for his geometry students to choose from, read, and do a report on. His new list is organized by topic, including: biography, history of mathematics, how-to: mathematics, mathematics - general, number theory, probability and statistics, puzzles and problems, reference.
Links to Amazon.com have been provided for your convenience.The list is also available for download as a MS Word document,text file or PDF file.
You need Flash 6 to use the Pythagograms widget, but even if you don't have that, there's a nice collection of problems.
http://168.30.200.21/~bpayne/factor/algtiles.htm
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Gauss.html
As a portal site, IDEAS provides educators a starting point in their search for educational materials. Although the resources have been aligned to the Wisconsin State Academic Standards, teachers in other states might find their organized list useful.Search lesson plans and other curricular resources by
- Subject
- Grade Level
- Wisconsin Standard
- Keyword
Classroom resources to explore the different ways that we can connect the themes of mathematics and the media. Ideas range from critically examining the mathematics used in advertisement to the mathematics of proportion and scale needed to create movie sets.
http://www.members.shaw.ca/ron.blond/index.htmlA collection of Java applets that animate many math concepts, including slope, quadratic functions, exponential functions, circle geometry, and much more. Be sure to look at the "NEW MINI-EXPLORERS FOR TLE-12" to see the latest additions to the website.
http://www.sunsite.ubc.ca/DigitalMathArchive/Euclid/byrne.htmlIn 1847, the English mathematician Oliver Byrne published an edition of Euclid, attempting to present Euclid's proofs in terms of colorful pictures, using as little text and, in particular, as few labels as possible. This web site is trying to photograph the entire volume and put it on the web. There are also links to other web versions of Euclid as well as other related web sites.
http://mathematicallysane.comA site promoting the rational reform of mathematics education.
Understanding Math Software
http://www.neufeldmath.com/Lite AppletsPrograms for Windows or Macintosh for math learning in grades 4 - 10. Sample progams are available for download.
http://www.joma.org/vol2/articles/wattenberg/JOMA_article/wattenberg1.htmlMath Awareness Month: April 2002Lite applets produce output that is easily cut-and-pasted into a spreadsheet or a computer algebra system.
A student can then use the spreadsheet or computer algebra system to analyze this output.
Through the Javascript and HTML forms interface, curriculum developers need no formal knowledge of Java to create their own interactive materials.See also Lessons Using Lite Applets at http://mathforum.org/te/alejandre/ The lessons in this collection were written for a middle school or developmental mathematics level audience
The Lite Applet Collection is open source. All the files used in this article, including the Java source code files, are
freely available at http://www.joma.org/vol2/articles/wattenberg/contents.html
This year, "Mathematics and the Genome" is the theme of Mathematics Awareness Month (MAM). Mathematics Awareness Month provides the mathematical sciences community with opportunities for promoting the importance and versatility of mathematics, and its relationship to our daily lives.
NCTM's Illuminations site has tools to explore mathematics and
create
interactive lessons. Most of the tools can be used at multiple grade
levels.
Recommended grade levels are given.
http://www.lightwithin.org/curriculum/content_areas/math/math.html
An animated, interactive testing and learning site. Includes:
Discussions of mathematics education reform. Includes a list of Mathematics Curriculum Projects developed with funding from the National Science Foundation.
A resource center devoted to using The Geometer's Sketchpad in the classroom. Has activities and lesson plans, premade sketches (including posters for the classroom and activities for algebra, precalculus, and calculus), tips for getting started with SketchPad, and stories from the classroom.
Includes links to several sources of hands-on geometry activities:
http://geometrygames.org
You can download free software Kali to draw symmetrical patterns, KaleidoTile to create tessellations of the sphere, Euclidean plane and hyperbolic plane, and find out about the two-week classroom unit Exploring the Shape of Space, for teachers in grades 6 - 10.
Number Patterns Fun with Curves & Topology http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbfunpatt.htm
Prime numbers, the golden ratio, Pascal's Triangle, mazes and maps, etc.
Investigating Patterns: Symmetry and Tessellations http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbsymteslk.htm
Soap bubbles and honeycombs, Islamic tessellations, M.C. Escher, symmetry by paper folding, and more
Investigating Patterns: Polyhedra Pastimes http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/jbpolyhedra.htm
Activities ranging from creating three-dimensional polyhedra with gumdrops and toothpicks to examining Ernst Haeckel's nineteenth-century sketches of polyhedral structure of Radiolaria (a plankton).
A Fermi question is posed with limited information given, and requires that students ask many more questions; for example, "How many water balloons would it take to fill the school gymnasium?" Find new open-ended problems every week, view hints, and see outstanding solutions to previous problems.
For more on Fermi questions, see http://mathforum.org/workshops/sum96/interdisc/sheila1.html
A math encyclopedia, link library, math quotes, minitexts, and a historical note and quotation of the day.
2. The St. Andrews Mathematics History website page at http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk:80/~history/Day_files/Now.html takes you to a list of mathematicians who were born or died on today's date. From there you can link to other dates, biographies, birthplace maps, and other interesting places.
An animation: the clown and dude walk, while you see their positions and velocities graphed. Investigate SimCal more from their home page at http://tango.mth.umassd.edu/
Making Mathematics matches students and teachers in grades seven through twelve with professional mathematicians who mentor them via electronic mail as they work on open-ended mathematics research projects.
Don't miss the special section, MegaMoo!
Suzanne Alejandre at the Math Forum has developed a middle school lesson utilizing Boxer's Tessellation Tool Java applet to help students understand why equilateral triangles, squares, and regular hexagons tessellate regularly in the Euclidean plane. In addition to alignment to NCTM Standards and a step-by-step guide, the Teacher Lesson Plan links to Math Forum resources such as:
- Information and Lessons
- Problems of the Week
- Teacher2Teacher
- Ask Dr. Math
The Student Page is here:
http://mathforum.com/pubs/boxer/student.tess.html
BoxerMath.com offers on-line curricula for Pre-algebra, Algebra I & II, Geometry, and Trigonometry. All courses include practice problems, tests, lesson plans and enrichment activities. BoxerMath.com also correlates course lessons with state and national mathematics standards. A free trial is available:
Click on the Educational Activity "Track a NOPP Drifter" for math lesson plans using data on drifting ocean buoys.