Nick Misiunas

October – Week Three

Yesterday was my first day experiencing a class at the very beginning of the school day and I have to admit that things went a lot better. The kids were a lot more subdued and a lot more focused on anything I had to say. I introduced them to a model of traffic on a highway where many variables could be controlled. I asked them how they thought they could improve the result of the simulation by changing certain variables and played around with it for a bit. We discussed some of the variables that were involved in making this model and where it might be used for, where models in general are used, so on and so forth.

Next week I want to be able to have them see a graph or a picture of a real life situation and model it with a function. I’m currently searching for a good quadratic example. I want to be able to show them a picture with a description and have them make up the function that will describe what is happening, but I also need to take care in avoiding multiple variables. I originally thought of doing an acceleration/velocity/position equation but I think even that will be too much for them. I need to keep it to only one to two, at least until they get the idea of how it works. I think I may come up with a few examples. A simple situation with an exact model and a second situation where they are given a set of points and attempt to create a function with best fit. I can show them how Excel has a best fit function and they would be able to compare theirs to Excel’s at the end. I think they would find that pretty exciting, so now I just need to come up with two good engaging situations.

Maybe I’ll use the sunspot data for the second one and have them do a piecewise function – one positive parabola for one section and a negative parabola for the second (Since they haven’t learned sine waves yet). I just need to think it through a little more to make sure they can handle everything, but I’m pretty excited about it.

Uncategorized | nickmisiunas | October 20, 2011 7:54 am

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