Bluffton’s Explore and Explain Mathematics Courses for Middle School Teachers
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Transcript of Bluffton’s Explore and Explain Mathematics Courses for Middle School Teachers
Bluffton’s Explore and Explain Mathematics Courses for Middle
School Teachers
Donald E. HooleyBluffton University
Bluffton, [email protected]
2007 MAA/AMS Joint Meetings
Outline
• Bluffton’s Program• Goals• Teaching Strategies• Pedagogical Approaches• Number Theory and Algebra course• Geometry course• Results• Examples
Bluffton’s Program
CBMS MET BLUFFTONNumbers & Oper. Fund. for El.Tea.Data, Prob. & Stat. Under.Num.DataCalculus CalculusDiscrete Math Discrete MathMeasure and Geom. Geom. for MC*Algebra & Functions Alg.&Func.for
MC* *special Bluffton MC courses
Goals
• Organized exploration
• Inductive reasoning
• Verbal explanation
• Writing mathematics
• Group processes
• Enjoyment of mathematics
Teaching Strategies
• Summary reports
• Written reports
• Question introduction
• Group work
exploration, conjecture, explanation
Pedagogical Approaches
• Guided constructivism
• Generalization
Algebra and Functions
• Partitions• Palindromes• Primes and factors• Figurate numbers• Diophantine equations• Congruences• Pythagorean triples• Pell’s equation• Continued fractions• Prop. of binary operations
• TSP• PERT• Bin packing• Conflict graphs• Linear programming• Loans and annuities• Function labs• Symmetric polynomials• Factoring models• Cubics and quartics
Geometry for MC
• Geom. software• Coord. geometry• Quad. and midpoints• Taxicab geometry• Pythagorean Ther.• Triangle trig• Cyclic quadrilaterals• Circles
• Fibonacci and GR• Symmetry groups• Strip patterns• Trans. Matrices• Tesselation• Regular polyhedra• 3D symmetry• Fractals
Results
• High interest
• High involvement
• Good summaries
• Average scores
Algebra Examples
How many ways are there to distribute 8 ice cream bars among 5 persons?
How many n-digit palindromes are there?
Is every positive even integer the sum of two primes?
Which positive integers are abundant?
Can you find positive integers a, b, c so that T(a) + T(b) = T(c)?
Algebra Examples 2
How many beetles might be in a box of beetles and spiders containing 46 legs?
What happens to a+b mod 9?Can you find a Pythagorean triangle whose area
is equal to its perimeter?For which positive integers D does Pell’s
equation x2 – Dy2 = 1 have solutions?Can you find a continued fraction equal to the
square root of 2?
Algebra Examples 3
Investigate commutativity, associativity, and existence of identity and inverses for:
a*b = b a*b = a+b+1
a*b = a+b+ab a*b = min(a,b)
a*b = gcd(a,b) a*b = lcm(a,b)
a*b = (a+b)/2 a*b = ABS(a-b)
a*b = 1/(a+b) a*b = (a+b)/(1+ab)
Geometry Examples 4
What length relationships do you find when constructing midlines of a triangle?
What length relationships do you find when constructing medians of a triangle?
What shapes are made when midpoints of sides of an arbitrary quadrilateral are connected?
What points are equidistant from two given points in Taxicab geometry?
Geometry Examples 5
What happens when you form sinT/t for each angle T and side t of a triangle?
How are the lengths of the sides and the product of the diagonals of a cyclic quadrilateral related?
How do the products of the lengths of the segments created by intersecting chords of a circle compare?
Geometry Examples 6
What are the vertex angle measures in a regular n-gon?
Which regular polygons tesselate the plane?What are possible semi-regular tesselations
of the plane?Which polygons are faces of regular
polyhedra?What are the axes of symmetry for regular
polyhedra?
Credits
Kay, David C., College Geometry: A Discovery Approach, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Boston, 2001.
Masingilla, Joanna O., and Lester, Frank K., Mathematics for Elementary Teachers via Problem Solving, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998
Otto, Al, personal correspondence, Illinois State University, Normal-Bloomington, IL, 1994.
O’Daffer, Phares G., and Clemens, Stanley R., Geometry: An Investigative Approach, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Reading, MA, 1992.
CMJ 513
Let
p(x) = x3 – 87x2 + 181x + c
For which integers c does this cubic have three integer roots?