Who can read about the Toucan?

When I was little, my dad always read me bedtime stories.  We would read fairy tales, chapter books, picture books, and even poems!  My favorite poems were in the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein.  Shel Silverstein is very witty and his poems are very humorous.  My dad and I would laugh until our stomachs hurt as we read poem after poem.  The poem, "The Toucan", is one of my personal favorites. This poem brings back cherished memories of my childhood bedtime stories with my dad.

For my Children's Literature class, we had to choose our favorite poem and make a visually appealing bookmark.  I found this assignment very fun.  I think that this assignment would be great to use with elementary students when introducing poetry.  It allows the students to be creative in making their bookmark. This assignment allows them to independently choose their favorite poem.

Here are the instructions

I am excited to do this activity in the future in my classroom.  Of course with time, I may change a few things here and there.  I might even add onto this activity.  But I enjoyed it, and so I will hang onto this activity for the future.  Here are a few pictures of my book mark!

{In my assignment, the poem was required on the bookmark}

• Activity was adapted from Professor Annapurna Ganesh in Children's Literature (EDU 291) class.
• Poem was taken from the book, "Where the Sidewalk Ends".

  Silverstein, Shel. "The Toucan." Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems & Drawings of                            Shel Silverstein. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. 92. Print.

Bar Graphs with Cupcakes

Check out this video that I recently made.  I hope you like it!  Tell me what you think.

Music - Mindy Gledhill, Crazy Love

Dots in a Graph

We have been learning a lot about graphs lately...and I find scatter plots very interesting!  Scatter plots represent the relationship between two sets of data.  Instead of bars and lines, scatter plots use dots to show the data points.  Within the scatter plot, there can be a trend line.  A trend line is a line that can closely fit the majority of the data.

This scatter plot is an example of a positive trend line. 

As you can see, the dots look like they are getting higher.  They are traveling upward and increasing.  This is why it is considered a positive correlation scatter plot.

In addition to the positive scatter plot, we also have a negative scatter plot.

This is considered a negative correlation scatter plot.  If we look at the direction of the line, you can see that it is heading downward.  The numbers are decreasing as you follow the line.  The trend line for this graph would follow the dots and be considered a negative trend line.

Positive and negative correlation are not the only type of scatter plots, there is also no correlation.

In this particular scatter plot, the dots are not in any order.  We couldn't use a trend line (like we were talking about earlier) because we couldn't create a line for the majority of the data.  This scatter plot doesn't look like it is positive or negative.  That is why scatter plots, such as the one above, have no correlation.

Here is a site that gives examples about each type of scatter plot.  I found it very helpful and interesting!

Have a great day!

Scatter Plot pictures found here.

M&M Color Distribution

Have you ever wondered which color of M&M occurs most often?  Does the M&M company base their colors off of advertising or is it random?  In my math class, we did a very engaging lesson that turned this question into a learning activity.  This activity is excellent to use with elementary children, and can involve many different learning skills.

My class each received a snack size bag of plain milk chocolate M&M's.  Before we could open the bag, we had to make a prediction.  I guessed the color that would occur the most would be green, because frankly, it is my favorite color!  The color that I thought would occur the least was red.  After our predictions were made, we could open our M&M's (but we could not eat them!).

In my M&M bag, it did not turn out how I thought it would.  This is a picture of my M&M's...

I had more oranges than any other color!  This was way unexpected.  The graph that these M&M's are in is actually called a "Real Graph".  This is a real graph because it uses actual M&M's.  Real graphs can be used in many different activities.  For example, you could do a graph using real shoes!

Each student in our class had different data for their real graph.  So we used Bernoulli's Law of Large Numbers and combined our class data.  Our totals for each color were:

Brown: 53

Orange:97

Blue: 78

Green: 67

Red: 55

Yellow: 55

Grand Total: 405

That's a lot of M&M's!!!  We then put these numbers into percent form.  So we took the (total number of a color/Grand total).  We did that for each color listed above.  Here are our percentages...(rounded to the nearest tenth)

Brown: 13.1%

Orange: 24%

Blue: 19.3%

Green: 16.5%

Red: 13.6%

Yellow: 13.6% 

In our class the color that occurred the most was ORANGE.  I would have never guessed!  These answers may differ from experiment to experiment, but they should be around the same percentage.  Because, guess what!  The M&M company actually DOES distribute the color of their M&M's differently between each color.  Check it out Plain Milk Chocolate M&M color distribution.

If you look at the link, my class percentages and the M&M company percentages are pretty much the same!  Except, according to the company, the blue M&M should occur most in M&M bags.

This activity is a great activity that can involve anyone at any age. But make sure to not eat the M&M's until after the activity is over! :)


Source for activity:
Klassen, Rosanne. Class lecture. Mathematics for Elementary Education Teachers II. Mesa Community College, Mesa, AZ.

Cereal Box Prizes

Have you ever tried to collect a set of toys from a cereal box?  There is always the one toy that seems to never be in any of the boxes you buy.  How many more boxes would you need to buy to have the entire set?

In my math 157 class, we turned this common problem among cereal eaters into a lesson activity.  In our activity, our cereal box had six different toys to collect.  I made a prediction that I would need to buy 36 boxes of cereal to collect all six.  I figured that since 36 is the square root of 6, it made sense.  Instead of going to the store and actually buying cereal boxes with prizes, we conducted a simulation using our graphing calculators. {Simulations are used in probability to model what could really happen in a given situation.  There are other ways to run a simulation besides a random number generator.  You can use cards, dice, coins, and spinners}

There is a program on graphing calculators that generates random numbers; it is really convenient.  Here is a site that has directions.  The directions are entitled, "Generating Random Integers on the Home Screen". (It should be the first set of directions of the page).

If you don't have a graphing calculator, there is also a website that has a random number generator. Go to this website, scroll down the page until you see the Random Number Generator.  Click the link Random Number Generator.

  

For the range in our simulation, we used 1 as the minimum and 6 for the max.  The random number that displays on the calculator corresponds to the toy number (1 means toy 1).  We recorded tallies in a table, that looks like this...

We repeated this process until we had at least one tally mark in each box.  Once we did have one tally mark, the simulation ended.

The data table above is actually the simulation that I performed.  In my simulation, I had to buy 16 boxes of cereal to collect all of my six toys (not too shabby compared to my prediction before).  Even though I didn't have to buy 36 boxes of cereal and I only had to get 16, is it worth it to collect all six toys?  If each box of cereal costs $3.99, it would cost me $63.84 to have six cereal box toys.  In my opinion, I could get something that has much more value than a collection of cereal box toys for the same price.  I think I will stick with my chances, and hope that my luck wins me a cereal box prize.

Disclaimer:  If this simulation was performed again, don't expect the same results!  This is a random number generator simulation, so everything is random.

Source - This simulation was adapted by Roxanne Klassen from Simulation Station: Martha Frank, Central Michigan University and Explorations Activity 10 Collect All Ten to Win, 1998 Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Rock-Paper-Scissors

For me, as a little kid, the game Rock-Paper-Scissors was ALWAYS the deciding factor to see who went first in practically anything.  It was always "best out of three", and sometimes it just didn't seem fair when I'd always lose.  Is the commonly played game fair?  Or does it leave one person a higher advantage in winning?

In my Math 157 class, we looked deeper into the question of fairness.  We conducted an experiment!  I partnered up with my friend, Jessica, and we played the game 45 times.  We made sure that we kept the right tallies for our outcomes (we are competitive).  Our experimental probabilities were all about the same number.  The probability that I would win was 15/45 (simplified to 1/3).  The probability that Jessica would win was 16/45.  The probability that we would tie was 14/45.

So the question still remains, is the game fair?

Since we figured out the experimental probability, we decided that we needed to figure out the theoretical probability.  The difference between the two is simple.  Experimental probability is determined by observing the outcomes of an experiment.  Theoretical probability is the outcome under ideal conditions.  It is what "should" happen in the experiment.

The way that we figure out the theoretical probability is that we filled out a matrix, which looks like this.

In this matrix, the probability that A wins is 1/3.  The probability that B wins is 1/3.  The probability of a tie is 1/3.  Since the probabilities are equal, each party is equally likely to win.
When we go back to our experimental probabilities, even though they don't simplify to 1/3 exactly, the numbers are all within close distance of each other to almost equal 1/3.

So after all the math, the answer to our question above is...Rock-Paper-Scissors is a FAIR game!  Each person would have an equal chance to win.  So that means, we can keep using the game to determine who goes first, or even who gets the last cookie from the cookie jar.

Source for the matrix was found here

Source for the activity:
Klassen, Rosanne. Class lecture. Mathematics for Elementary Education Teachers II. Mesa Community     College, Mesa, AZ.