## Trying to find math inside everything else

### The Cold War

In my first year teaching I came up with this activity for working with quadratic-linear systems, based in the Cold War and missile defense. It didn’t work as well as I hoped, mostly because it was too complicated, but I like the core of the idea. Maybe now, with more experience and the brainstorming power of the MTBoS, we can think of a way to make it work. But first, I’ll describe what .i actually did.

Students entered the room to find the desks rearranged – four big group tables, and the room split down the middle by a wall of desks, representing the “Iron Curtain.” Each student was then randomly assigned to one of four groups: US Missile Command, US Missile Defense, USSR Missile Command, and USSR Missile Defense. (Only one student, the son of the Georgian consulate, demanded to be switched from the USSR group to the US side.)

Each student then had two roles – one of the roles was their job on the team. Treasurer, secretary, chief engineer, etc. These roles were public. Their other roles were secret – they were things like Double Agent, Handler, FBI Agent, Innocent.

The idea was that each missile team was trying to build a missile that could hit the other country, while bypassing their missile defense. And the missile defense teams were trying to shoot down the missiles. The missiles were represented by quadratic equations and the missile defense by linear functions. But the best way to find out what the other side was planning is through espionage.

Of course, the thing they’ll probably learn is that the missile defense fails and everyone dies – we all lose the cold war.

Below are the files I made way back when. What are your ideas to make this workable?

### The Factor Draft

Last year at #TMC13, I ran a session called Making Math Games. I stared off with an overview of what makes a game a good game, while still being good math pedagogy as well. Then we spent most of the session in two groups brainstorming idea for games for topics that are somewhat of a drag to get through. The other group worked on something in Algebra 2, though I don’t recall what – I must say both groups were supposed to write up what we did and neither did. (But I do think Sean Sweeney was in the other group, so maybe he remembers.)

My group worked on a game for factoring, focusing on Algebra 1. I took the ideas from the session and made a mostly operational game. Then, about 2 months ago, Max Ray came to visit me on the day I was unveiling that game in class. He saw it and it worked out…okay, but here was definitely improvements to be made. So we talked over lunch (about many things, not just the game – he’s great to talk to!) and then tried out some changes with my lunch gang. The changes seemed to work and I went forward with the new version in my afternoon classes to great success. By the end I think I had a really wonderful game, and so I wanted to share it with you.

### The Materials

A set of Factor Draft cards includes 3 differently-colored decks. Mine, pictured here, were green, blue, and yellow. One deck (green here) is the factor cards, with things like (x + 2) and (x – 1) written on them. Another deck (blue) is the sum cards, with numbers like 10x or -4x. The last deck (yellow) is the product cards, with numbers like +36 or -15.

### The Set-up

Lay out the cards as follows: make a 3 x 6 rectangle of factor cards, a 4×3 rectangle of sum cards, and a 4×3 rectangle of product cards, all face up. Place the remaining cards in separate piles next to the playing area.

In the cards I printed, I didn’t put the Xs on the blue sum cards. Max suggested I do because it’s easy to be confused on which is which.

### The Objective

The goal of the game is to collect 4 cards that can be used to complete a true statement of the following form: (factor card)(factor card) $= x^2$ + (sum card) + (product card).

### Gameplay

Each turn, a player may select any card from the playing field and place it face-up in front of them. They then replace that card with a new card of the same color from the deck. Play passes to the left. A player may have any number of cards in front of them, and may use any four cards to build a winning hand.

The cards I collected after turn 5. There’s two possible cards I could pull to win the game – can you see which ones?

If at any point a player achieves victory, if they had more turns than the other players, they must allow the other players additional turns to attempt to tie. Upon a tie, discard the winning cards and continue play as a tie-breaker.

A winning hand.

My co-teacher, when we were testing the game, said that it felt like Connect 4, in that with each move you have to decide whether to go on the offense to try and complete your four cards, or go on the defense and block the other players’ sets. But as each player gets more and more cards in front of them, it’s hard to see all of the connections and effectively block, so the game will always eventually lead to victory.

I may need to adjust the number of cards and type of cards in the decks, but I think what I currently have works well – if you have any feedback on the card distribution, let me know. The sum cards go from -10 to +10, with the numbers closer to 0 more common. The product cards go from -60 to +60, with each product card being unique. And the factor cards go from (x-10) to (x+10), also with the ones closer to 0 being more common. (There are no (x+0) cards.)

I did a whole little analysis to determine how many of each type of card to include…but maybe that’s a post for another day.

Sum:Product Deck – The first four pages are the sum deck, the next four are the product deck, the last four are the factor deck.

Factor Draft Play Mat and Rules – Players can use these mats to place their cards and check for a win.

### Intentions Change Approach (DragonBox 2 vs DragonBox 1)

So since I first had my students play DragonBox last year, We Want to Know came out with a sequel, DragonBox 2. They are now branded as 5+ and 12+, as the original DragonBox is intended to introduce the idea of algebra and solving equations to someone unfamiliar with it, while DragonBox 2 is meant to deepen the equation-solving toolbox of someone already familiar with solving equations, allowing them to deal with more complex equations.

I was trying to decide which one to use with my class this year. It seemed like DragonBox2 would be better at first glance, because I teach high schoolers: we have seen basic equations, and now we need to kick it up a notch. But I wound up going with DragonBox 1, saving the sequel for a handful of students who blazed through it and were advanced. I know I made the right choice because of situations like I tweeted about:

There were several students who could solve the first level (one of the hardest in the game), but not the second, which came later. This showed me that there was something about the structure of an equation that wasn’t getting through and that we needed to work on it.

In DragonBox 1, you only really have four abilities: you can combine inverses into 0, you can divide a card by itself to get 1, you can add a card from the deck to the game (one on each side), and you can attach a card from the deck to another (multiplication/division), as long as you do it to every card in the level. In DragonBox 2, you can do new things like flip a card from one side to the other, divide a night version by a day version (leaving negative 1), combine like terms, factor out common terms, and treat complex expressions as single units to multiply/divide by.

Those are all good things to do, and someone proficient in algebra should be able to do those things. But I backed away from using it in class because it lacked the why. At the end of the first DragonBox lesson, I compile the notes students took while playing to make a comprehensive list of rules and abilities you have in the game. The one student who played DragonBox2 insisted that, in the game, you can slide a card from one side to the other. No matter how much I pressed him, he didn’t see that the card wasn’t sliding over, it was flipping/inverting.

And that’s what I was afraid of by using DragonBox2. These tools are important, but they have to be earned by understanding them. DragonBox2 gives them to you by completing previous levels, not necessarily by understanding how. At the least, in DragonBox 1, because you are stuck with the basics, you have to grapple with where the solutions come from. They can’t magically appear.

So while DragonBox2 is rated as 12+, I wouldn’t give it to any student who didn’t already have a firm grasp on the concept of equality. Maybe post-Algebra 1. Or at least not until much later in the year.

### Is Algebra 2 Necessary?

So, of course, Andrew Hacker’s article “Is Algebra Necessary?” had caused quite the stir, and the obvious answer to that question was “Yes, algebra is necessary.” But the article makes you think if all of what we learn of algebra is necessary. And I think it isn’t, but that comes from thinking about what high school is for.

Do we expect that, when a student gets to college, they can skip the lower levels of Biology because they took bio in high school? No, of course not. (Excepting AP courses, of course.) So what is our goal for learning biology in high school? It’s to provide a general foundation of the subject, that most people should know, and it prepares you for a college level course or major in Biology.

Really, all of what we learn in high school is designed to broaden our horizons, to provide experiences and content we wouldn’t see otherwise, and to provide a baseline of knowledge that we feel everyone should have.

I remember reading from someone, though I don’t recall who, that they had struggled through Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus, slogging along, and then when they got to Calculus a light turned on. “This was why we’ve been learning everything we’ve done in the past two years! It was all for this!” Even the wikipedia page on Pre-Calc says “…precalculus does not involve calculus, but explores topics that will be applied in calculus.” It’s putting the work before the motivating problem, again.

But now thinking about the normal course sequence for a student that is not advanced: Algebra –> Geometry –> Algebra 2 –> Pre-Calculus –> Graduated from High School, so no Calc! So these students will have two whole years of math without the payoff that shows why we do it.

And as teachers we know that you need to start with the motivating factor, not have it at the end. So why don’t we have calculus first, before those two? If we consider our goal in high school is to spread ideas people might not see otherwise, I think Calculus has a lot of important ideas people should see that would improve their lives. Optimization? The very idea of it can improve how you look at all the problems in your life. Related rates, limits, the idea of changing rates and local rates, the relationships between functions, these are all good ideas to be familiar with.

Can the students learn these things without having done Algebra 2/Pre-Calc? I think so. As Bowman Dickson says, “The hardest part of calculus is algebra.” So what if we taught it in a way that didn’t rely on that? We can get the ideas across without jumping into the nitty-gritty of a lot of it. Save that for AP level classes, or for college calc. What you take in college is more in depth that high school, so it should be the same here.

Now, there would certainly be some stuff from Algebra 2/Pre-Calc that we really need first. But why not have those in Algebra 1? I accidentally taught several things from Alg 2 when I taught Alg 1 my first year, because they seemed like natural extensions of what we were doing, and I didn’t know they weren’t required until I started planning for the next year. But also, consider this. If we made Probability & Statistics one of the main courses of the math sequence, I don’t have to teach it in Algebra 1. I spent about 7 weeks on those topics last year. That’s 7 weeks of Alg 2 content I could fold in, without worrying about reviewing old stuff because we just did it.

So then the new math sequence could be Statistics –> Geometry –> Algebra –> Calculus. (And I think that might fit well with the science sequence of Biology –> Earth Science –> Chemistry –> Physics.)
Thoughts?

### Algebra Taboo

I remember reading about the idea of Math Taboo on Sam Shah’s blog, this post by Bowman Dickson. I feel like I had the idea independently, but it seems like many people have, by doing a cursory Google search of the phrase.

Unfortunately, there are lots of posts ABOUT math taboo, but no real materials provided. If I have seen anything, it’s a lesson plan on having the students make their own. Or I saw one for sale, but it was for the elementary level. So I made one myself.

My co-teacher and I went through all the Integrated Algebra regents given since 2008 and pulled out any words that it’s possible a student might not know. I also went through my own lessons and pulled out any vocabulary I had given them. Below is the .pdf for printing your own (I used card stock and laminated), and two .doc templates if you’d like to make more, or alter the ones I have. I made a total of 126 cards (63 double sides – maybe slightly overboard).

Since I found no others, it makes sense to share.

Math Taboo (full pdf)

Math Taboo Pink  Math Taboo Blue (doc template)

### How to Order the Topics

Not much posting recently, but hey, it’s summer. I’ve mostly done vacationing, now, and am really thinking about the new year.

I just finished reading through the first half of Merzbach’s and Boyer’s A History of Mathematics, up until the Renaissance. I took a list of topics associated with different cultures as I read through, as they may lead to some interesting lessons in the upcoming school year. I’m not really sure of the best way to integrate with the Global curriculum, but the 9th Grade Team is meeting tomorrow and I’m hoping I can talk with the history teacher about it. Obviously an ordering by mathematical sense won’t match a chronological historical ordering, or even a topical historical ordering, but I’m sure something will come out of it.

At least, I feel that, if one had to come first, it is better to have the historical context before the math, than vice versa. Here’s the list I made, though there’s not much to it.

 Algebra Tiles Ancient China Counting Rods Trigonometry Ancient India Number Systems Ancient India Lattice Multiplication Ancient India Radicals Ancient India Fractions Egypt Unit Fractions Adding Like Terms Greece As opposed to the Babylonians Geometric Algebra Greece Ratios Greece Euxodus, in Plato’s Academy Trigonometric Ratios Greece Ptolomy, using circles Longitude and Latitude Greece Completing the Square Islamic Empire Number Systems Maya Bases Systems of Equations Medieval China Pascal’s Triangle Medieval China From the Jade Mirror Number Systems Mesopotamia Bases Context Clues Mesopotamia Place Value Exponents Mesopotamia Place Value Fibonnacci Middle Ages Slope Middle Ages Sine and inclined planes Proportions Pythagoreans Music Radicals Pythagoreans The expulsion of Hippasus Types of Numbers Pythagoreans Numerology

### A History of Math

One of my favorite math courses when I was in undergrad was “History of Math.” I thought it was fascinating to see where it all came from and how math was done before we had more modern advancements or with different number systems.

I wanted to bring some of that history into my Algebra class and have often lamented that it doesn’t match up nicely with Global Studies. The students do Geometry in 10th grade, but the Greeks in 9th. They do Algebra in 9th grade, but the Arabs in 10th. So the obvious connections are not really there.

But there are more, I think, such as perhaps having a lesson about Egyptian fractions to improve students fraction skills while they learn about ancient Egypt in global, as well as to introduce the idea of a negative exponent. I couldn’t find my History of Math textbook from when I was in college, as I may have sold it back to the store, so I just bought a new one.  I’ll start looking through it over the summer and see what connections and lessons I can make.