Mathematics in the Real World
Math In Daily Life
When you buy a car, follow a recipe, decorate your home, sail a boat or build a house, you're using math principles. This Annenberg Foundation site provides real world examples of why math - even advanced match concepts - are important in everyday life.
TedEd Math In Real Life
While many of the videos might be too advanced for younger students, some of the video talks on this site can be a great introduction to "why do we need to learn this stuff".
Real-World Math
Math teacher Dan Meyer explains how presenting real-life scenarios through photos and videos can make math problems "irresistible" to students.
Highly recommended.
- YouTube URL
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRMVjHjYB6w
How Traffic Jams Happen
Ever wonder why traffic jams appear when there is no accident or other apparent cause?
The Mathematical Society in Japan used a test track to replicate traffic jams that seem to occur for no reason. These "shockwave" traffic jams travel backwards at about 20 km (~12 mph). That's why you don't always see the massive wreck you expected after sitting in traffic for so long. Something as simple as a miss timed lane change can cause a ripple that creates a nasty "shockwave" backup.
In this video, it starts around 14 seconds in when the white car slows down for a second. The rest would be familiar to anyone who's driven the freeways during rush hour.
- YouTube URL
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wm-pZp_mi0
If High School Math Was Real
What would happen if the typical math problems we learned in High School were actually used in real life?
A great parody, with some real life lessons at the end.
- YouTube URL
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGHsAVBBaH8
Thinking Fountain!
The Thinking Fountain in the Minnesota Science Museum offers a variety of brainteasers, not just in math.
Monster Math
Monster Math for grades K-3 presents puzzles in a story format and the contents are in both English and Spanish--a friendly way to help these youngest students to transition from Spanish to English.
MendelWeb's Statistics Calculation Page
The Mendel project is routinely assigned in high school classes for the study of genetics. Students are asked to look at their peers and families for the presence of a widow's peak, for instance. Usually, the pool of subjects at hand is fairly small so compiling math statistics doesn't work so well. The existence of telecommunications, however, allows students to collect info from sufficiently large numbers to draw authentic conclusions and get a better taste for the unresolved issues in this field. And sites like MendelWeb's Statistics Calculation Page allows students to quickly calculate results from a large pool of data.
Some approaches to problem-solving are driven by particular subjects, while others are inter-disciplinary. In any case, math skills are so fundamental that it deserves at least a dialogue.
For many students math inspires fear, but a good coordinated curriculum, recognizing overlap and particularity, can help overcome these barriers.
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Other Areas To Check Out...
• Major US and North American Federal Organizations: Environment
• Simulation & Modeling Tools
• Art Creation
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• Astronomy Near and Far
