This could be a “custom scenario” activity, though we didn’t do it that way in an Algebra class.
There are a number of places on the Web where you can see the current whatever, for example, the current World Population. A recent favorite is http://www.worldometers.info/.
The set up was:
- Show kids the site, let them see the number
- Tell them a convenient future time that’s during a future class (e.g., 9:15 AM on March 17), maybe two weeks away.
The task was:
- Predict the population at that time. You must turn in your prediction during the class before the one you’r predicting for.
- Say you’ll give a prize for the closest result.
What is cool about it:
It’s all about rates, but has all sorts of juicy properties such as many-digit numbers that, as far as they know, need to be precise to the nearest “one”; and of course the issue of time. It owuld be convenient if they took data at 9:15 AM for a few days, but that’s not practical. So they have to convert to some uniform unit: decimal days, whatever, to figure out what to multiply by.
What happened:
No one (duh) made a graph or set up the equation for a line. But everyone computed a rate, such as people per hour.
The best figure was within a few hundred, but answers (in this “regular” algebra class”) varied by millions.
Next step would have been to collect everyone’s data, use a good tool such as Fathom, plot it, and see if we could, as a class, make a better predction for the next class. Of course there was no time for that this time around.
by Tim on September 1, 2009
We welcome David Brookes, an estimable physics educator and researcher, and a generally deep thinker, to the ranks of our users. The papers his students have been producing in the four-color universe are stunning.
They’re seriously gigantic, and erudite, and (like some recent work in Texas over the summer by Jennifer Smith, thanks, UTeach!) these people are actually solving the universe.
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by Tim on September 1, 2009
by Tim on September 2, 2008
Hi all!
Sorry, but you now need to be logged in to comment. I have been spending far too long every day deleting all the ads that robots place in this blog. Don’t let that stop you, though!
by Tim on August 15, 2008
The new Linguistics scenario—where you might ask your native whether “BBRBRG” is a grammatical sentence—is all about syntax, not semantics.
That is, it’s only about the structure or grammar of the language, not its meaning. You might reasonably ask, what’s the point of simulating learning a language if you don’t know what the language means?
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by Tim on August 14, 2008
What do the colors mean in the linguistics scenario?
They’re not really words—they’re parts of speech. If you think of blue-red-green-blue as noun-verb-adjective-noun, it may make more sense.
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When esteemed designer Ann Lasko-Harvill was trying out the Ideal Gas scenario, she found that her temperature data didn’t appear in her tables. When I told her she had to type in the temperatures herself, she asked me to explain my thinking.
Why did I set up this elaborate computer-based system so that you have to enter data by hand? There are three basic answers.
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Good morning!
I have just posted a new build of the system at http://www.bigtimescience.com that fixes a few bugs. Most importantly, you can now get an email from our system when you sign up for a subscription account. Still doesn’t work with pay-as-you-go, but we’re working on it!
Also, although I am not supposed to be writing new scenarios, I have posted prototype code for a “linguistics” scenario that, in a way, is the most deeply scientific of the whole set.
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The new, improved-we-hope latest version of the simulation system is now available at http://www.bigtimescience.com. It will keep changing and improving over the next couple months, but it should be usable. There are some important changes…
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Years ago, the brilliant Peggy Noone showed me how some science activities work because they slow down the process you are studying. A classic example is how Galileo studied acceleration on a ramp (partly) because falling objects are too fast. Peggy showed us ways to slow down the process of dissolving so we could see it in greater detail (and learn a great word: schlieren).
Our system deliberately slows down the investigative process as well. And the chief way we do this is with money.
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