Lessons
Lessons in Units
CCSS Units
The Waiting Game
How many people should you date before you settle down? Students use modeling with probability distributions to come up with a rule to try to maximize their relationship happiness.
The Reel Deal
How has the length of popular movies changed over time? Students use scatterplots to examine linear and nonlinear patterns in data and make predictions about the future.
Bracketology
What’s the best strategy for creating a March Madness bracket? Students use probability to discover that it’s basically impossible to correctly predict every game in the tournament. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Overrated
How much confidence should you place in online ratings? Students use ratios and averages to explore the different ways products can be rated online.
It's a Date
How can we improve our calendar? Students examine some other ways to keep track of dates, and use number sense and function concepts to convert between different calendars.
Hitting the Slopes
Can you predict a country's Winter Olympic performance? Students analyze scatterplots and correlation coefficients to pick out the best predictive model for Olympic success.
Let Down Your Hair
How fast does hair grow? Students analyze a scatterplot, create a line of best fit, and interpret slope as the rate of hair growth over time.
Wealth of Nations
How is wealth distributed in the United States? Students use measures of center, five-number summaries, and box plots to examine different distributions while digging into one of the most important economic and political issues facing the nation.
Canalysis
What's the ideal size for a soda can? Students use the formulas for surface area and volume of a cylinder to design different cans, calculate their cost of production, and find the can that uses the least material to contain a standard 12 ounces of liquid.
Datelines
What's an acceptable dating range? Students use linear equations and linear inequalities to examine the May-December romance, and ask whether the Half Plus Seven rule of thumb is a good one.
Decoder Ring
What are some ways to encrypt secret messages? Students explore function concepts using ciphers to encrypt messages both graphically and algebraically; they try to decrypt some messages too. In the end, they’ll learn what makes for a useful cipher, and what makes a cipher impossible to decode.
Nothing But Net
How do you determine the best scorer in basketball? Students compare LeBron James and Tyson Chandler in various ways, from total points, to points per game/minute, to a new measure called net points in order to decide.
1600 Pennsylvania
How big is the White House? Students build scale models to determine the surface area and volume of America's most famous home.
Bumpy Flight
How many tickets should airlines sell? Students use probability and expected value to investigate the overbooking phenomenon and why airlines make the decisions they do.
Gobbler's Dilemma
Should stores open on Thanksgiving Day? Students use game theory, payoff matrices, and the famous Prisoner's Dilemma to explore why stores keep opening earlier and earlier. And earlier.