graph – lazy 0ch0

One graph. Ten minutes. An important conversation.

At the beginning of class I showed this to my students:

They came up with lots of interesting things.

There are three variables
They are functions
They are different colors
The units are millions and years
The scale for the millions is by 500,000’s and for years is decades
The domain of all 3 functions is 1920 to 2010
The range is 0 to 2.5 million
All of the functions are positive over their domain
The average rate of change for the red graph from 1920 to 2010 is positive
The average rate of change for the light purple graph from 1920 to 2010 is close to zero
The greatest average rate of change for all functions appears to occur from 1980 to 2000.

Then I asked them to predict what the graph was about. Most felt it detailed some sort of economic situation. Or population. Then came the reveal:

They were shocked. We talked about possible causes for this situation, like the school-to-prison pipeline and the privatization of the prisons. More eyebrows raised. I brought up the question of what the racial breakdown of the prison system might look like. It was an important conversation.

And then we moved on to the regularly scheduled program: the lesson.

That was this week. While this class opener wasn’t directly tied to work that we’ve been doing in algebra 2 and was relatively brief, I felt compelled to have this conversation with my kids. This summer I began thinking about how to deepen the connections between social issues and math. Since I suck at projects, I thought about making these connections in smaller, bite-sized ways — comparable to problems found on a typical NYS Regents exam. In an ideal world, I would find (and write some) problems around social issues that are directly tied to the algebra 2 curriculum and discuss them with students. But this is really, really hard. Factoring by grouping doesn’t exactly lend itself to talking about racial inequities.

I was upfront with them. I said that its hard for me to relate some of the mathematics we learn to their daily lives, but we can do it in other ways. I told them that it was my responsibility to help you see how math can you uncover your world. Graphs are one way.

Through this graph of incarcerated Americans, I’ve myself learned that periodically presenting an interesting graph or data can be another way to build in time for important discussions around social justice and empowering students through math — even if the discussion isn’t wrapped up in a “problem” or directly tied to what we’re studying. This is not unlike What’s Going On in this Graph from the NY Times.

Art & Desmos

Recently I had my precalculus students complete an art project using Desmos. We were finishing up our unit on conic sections. I paired them up and gave them two class days and the weekend to conjure something good. They didn’t disappoint. Props to Bob Loch who helped provide the structure.

The guidelines were pretty simple:

Include at least one of each conic section in your art work
Place restrictions on the domain and/or range of at least two of your graphs
Solve a system of equations resulting from your graph

The grade was based on the above criteria and how complex their artwork was. I loved this activity because it was so open ended. I usually don’t do a great job allowing my kids to showcase their creative side during class activities. I was impressed with some of the art they managed to create.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my increased usage of Desmos this school year. It’s an excellent tool. I literally can’t imagine teaching without it.

Height Problem from Graphing Stories

This week in my Precal class, we were working on increasing, decreasing, and constant functions. I showed them a Graphing Story. These problems are perfect for analyzing graphs of functions. I chose the one that asks the viewer to graph height vs. time based on a lady swinging on a rope in Costa Rica.

If you haven’t already, first watch it for yourself here.

I’ve done some of the other graphing stories before and I love them. We did this one, discussed various aspects of the graph, and eventually hit on increasing, decreasing and constant intervals of the function. Its a great activity, but an interesting debate arose regarding the given answer.

You notice that the answer (i.e. graph) has a relatively large increase during 7-10 seconds.

When I initially displayed the solution to my students, they debated whether this interval was accurate. They found it intriguing that, according to the solution, she swung roughly 32 meters higher than her original height on the platform. Some of them said yes, it was possible for her to swing 44 meters in the air. I mean, looking at the video her upswing does look VERY high – much higher than the platform she started jumped from. Some students said no, that the camera angle was playing tricks on us. It was such an awesome discussion, and to be honest, I told them I wasn’t sure about who was right, but I’d do my best to find out.

After school I spoke to a physics teacher at my school, Shane Coleman (who these students also have), about the problem to get his scientific opinion. He informed me that it is physically impossible for the lady to have swung as high as 44 meters, unless she was pushed hard, had extra momentum when she left the platform, or pumped her legs on the swing, none of which happened. He told me for the footage in the clip, her kinetic energy would not have exceeded her potential energy. In other words, she wouldn’t have been able to swing higher than her original height; it would have been less and less with every swing. I probably should have known this, because its sort of common sense, but whatever. So then I brought all this back to my Precalc kids and it made for a pretty good discussion while we ironed out the actual solution. Later that day, the students probed even more while in Shane’s class. Awesome.

Now here’s my question: have my students, Shane, and I missed something here or is the solution inaccurate? If so, my follow up question is what assumption(s) could we make about the swing that would make the given solution valid?

On a slightly different note, isn’t it also interesting that her height is 0 at two different instances, yet she never reaches the ground?