PCTM 2023 SUMMER CONFERENCE – RESOURCES The 35 Game: “The 35 Game” for Compound Inequalities Shared Work: Cocoa Puffs and Shared Work The Number Game: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/zqth9dmmr2 https://www.cantorsparadise.com/math-based-decision-making-the-secretary-problem-a30e301d8489 The Mathematical Way to Choose a Toilet ..read more

This past semester I added a fresh coat of paint to a unit on parametric equations by challenging students to develop their own animations on Desmos. For many years I have used a Desmos activity to introduce the idea of time as a parameter within equations – https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/576ed1058e03e695283c88b8 – and Desmos invites students to think about the role of time by inserting the idea into ordered pairs easily. Here’s how I introduced the idea. If you get lost or want to look under the hood, here is the final Desmos graph I share with students as a resource: https ..read more

My talk for the NCTM Annual Conference in Los Angeles this year centered on using stories from the media which feature probability claims to use as hooks in high school classrooms. Thanks to all who joined in the conversation and shared their thinking – I hope you enjoyed the hour as much as I did sharing it all! Powerpoint slides and slides printed as a pdf are provided below. plausibepossible-nctm2022Download Is it Possible? Is it Plausbile? PDFDownload ..read more

ENCOURAGE INVESTIGATION AND CONVERSATION WITH THE DESMOS CALCULATOR Visual Patterns (thanks Fawn Nguyen!): https://www.visualpatterns.org/ Investigating T-Shirt Offers Desmos Activity: https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5670acf05a543a6007737ea8 Shared Work and Cocoa Puffs: Cocoa Puffs and Shared Work STATISTICS AND STICKY DOTS Introverts and Signatures: https://mathcoachblog.com/2014/10/27/class-opener-day-36-introverts-vs-extroverts/ Luke Wilcox / StatsMedic – Does Beyonce Write Her Own Lyrics?: https://www.statsmedic.com/post/does-beyonce-write-her-own-lyrics Doug Tyson ..read more

This activity was inspired by the article “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”, by Catherine Case and Doug Whitaker. NCTM Mathematics Teacher, Volume 109, Issue 9 (May 2016) Around February each year, the AP Statistics message boards come alive with new and veteran AP Statistics teachers seeking ideas to help students understand the concept of statistical power. While Power is a “minor league” topic in the AP Stats curriculum, a robust discussion of the concept can help tie together the logic of statistical inference: P-values, error and sampling variability. I’ve developed a few activities to try t ..read more

“Mr. Lochel – we have a check to send to you. Please provide us an address.” What a fantastic e-mail I received this past year. It combines two wonderful things – money, and people wanting to send money to me. But this money was coming from a very special place. In 2017, a talented, driven group of students at my high school participated in the Moody’s Mega-Math Challenge. In this annual math modeling contest students are provided a prompt and 14 hours to develop a framework for a solution. The contest is now sponsored by MathWorks, and you can learn about the contest and resources for getting ..read more

This is the first in what will likely be a series of posts about classroom moves which I have adapted for remote learning. I hope you enjoy them! In my freshman-year Prob/Stat course, students experience a probability lesson featuring the game “Egg Roulette”, based on a bit from Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. Here is a summary of the “live” lesson: https://mathcoachblog.com/2015/09/20/an-egg-cellent-simulation/. This year, there were two considerations for how I would have students investigate the game: conducting the simulation and collecting the results. CONDUCTING THE SIMULATION The first cla ..read more

Today our friends at Desmos released an update of their Activity Builder editor. You can head to teacher.desmos.com now and explore the changes – edit a previous activity, create a new one OR copy screens from activities in the library of Desmos activities. The first thing I noticed about the updated editor was the increased freedom in screen design. Previously, elements like Graph, Note and Input were limited in their placement and number. There is more freedom now to move elements around, order them as you like, and include more of them in a single screen. Immediately I wanted to explore thi ..read more

Do you have an awesome math lesson? Do you like handsome cash prizes? The Rosenthal Prize for Innovation and Inspiration in Math Teaching offers a top prize of $25,000…and the 2019 winners have just been announced by the National Museum of Mathematics! Congratulations to Nat Banting, this years winner and a fun and inspiring twitter follow. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about dice outcomes auction somewhere down the road. On the link above you can read about past winners and learn about how to apply for 2020. I applied for the Rosenthal Prize back in the spring. At that time I ..read more

Last spring, the awesome folks at Desmos released a slew of slick (but easy-to-use) statistics features. Here is a brief video I made which walks through a few of the new features. With a new academic year beginning, I’m looking forward to changing some of my classroom moves in AP Stats to leverage the new features and build understanding. Here are 3 moves I’m planning to try this year: ASSESSING NORMALITY (Here is a previous post on this topic) Pop quiz! Below you see 6 boxplots. Each boxplot represents a random sample of size 20, each drawn from a large population. Which of the underly ..read more