Making Math Makes Sense

Lauren SiegelMaking Math, Presentations and Workshops, Sharing Ideas, Sponsoring Mathematics ProjectsLeave a Comment

We’ve said it before and we said it again at the Connected Learning Summit in July.  this was a great month of programs.  You can see some of the keynote speakers as well as find our Ignite talk among some other excellent 5 minute presentations (2nd session, 2nd talk) in their post here. Highlights From the 2021 Connected Learning Summit

Pooled Testing At Camp with STEM Santa FE

Lauren SiegelCommunity Partnerships, Events, History Connections, Making Math, Math is fun!, Sharing Ideas, Sponsoring Mathematics ProjectsLeave a Comment

This post is the sequence of instruction with work examples from a STEM Santa FE Camp held on January 28, 2021.  The students are 7th and 8th graders enrolled in a summer program following a year of primarily on-line instruction. Lesson Plan  History of Pooled Testing – Demo of Simple Pooling Order a Pooled Test Demo Kit (same as in

Voronoi at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

Josephine ShengCommunity Partnerships, Intern Experience, Making Math, Math is fun!, Parks & Recreation, Sharing Ideas, Sponsoring Mathematics ProjectsLeave a Comment

We’ve been working closely with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in creating activities and models to accompany the Beehive they have on site. There are a lot a mathematical concepts that can be taught in relation to the way beehives are constructed such as tessellations, Voronoi diagrams, area, and perimeter. We can’t wait to see how they use these activities and

UTeach Conference 2021 – Leveling the Playing Field: Creating Equity in Mathematics

Josephine ShengHistory Connections, Making Math, Math is fun!, Presentations and Workshops, Sharing Ideas, Teacher Support & TrainingLeave a Comment

MathHappens had the opportunity to present at the 2021 UTeach STEM Educators Conference. The theme for this year was Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in STEM Education. Paola and Josephine led our session on “Leveling the Playing Field: Creating Equity in Mathematics.” Below are some images of our slides. If you would like to view our entire presentation, here are our

Take and Make – Voronoi Flipbook

Paola GarciaMaking Math, Math at Home, Math is fun!, Sharing Ideas, Take and MakeLeave a Comment

After talking with Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, we began searching for new ideas to interact with Voronoi Diagrams. During our pre-pandemic presentations and events we allowed people to interact with a Voronoi simulation that had been posted on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voronoi_growth_euclidean.gif While brainstorming we decided to buy a flipbook kit and test out what we could do with them. One of our

Take and Make: Icosahedron from Golden Rectangles

Josephine ShengMaking Math, Math at Home, Math is fun!, Sharing Ideas, Take and Make2 Comments

We were inspired by a post on Twitter by Olivier Longuet shown below. The object in the photo is an icosahedron, a 20-sided 3D shape, made out of three golden rectangles with side lengths that obey the golden ratio (1:1.618033…). To make a cardboard version of the icosahedron, print out this document and follow the instructions! You can also make

Wald’s Survivorship Airplane Problem

Lauren SiegelMuseums, Sharing IdeasLeave a Comment

This is a great example where mathematicians applied some creative thinking to solve a very real world problem.  It is Abraham Wald’s Survivorship Bias problem.  To help explain the sequence of concepts that lead to his insight, we made some wooden planes to help visualize the problem, and the solution. We start out thinking about the planes that come back

Making Friends with the M in STEM: STEM Santa Fe Spring Camp

Josephine ShengCommunity Partnerships, Events, Intern Experience, Making Math, Math is fun!, Sharing IdeasLeave a Comment

MathHappens Foundation and STEM Santa Fe partnered together to host a week’s worth of camp sessions for a group of 27 students from March 15-19. Camp sessions were led by MathHappens staff, Lauren Siegel, Josephine Sheng, Elizabeth Wrightsman, Anh Nguyen and Viyang Shah and group discussions were led by a group of facilitators including Naila Hajiyeva, and Quan Nguyen who

Vaccine Strategy II: We Aren’t Using the Right Experts

Lauren SiegelSharing Ideas2 Comments

We need to include logistics and business experts.   PDF Format Here. This is a follow up to a January 4 post, Vaccine Strategies: Follow the Math on mathematics based business strategies that can inform the vaccination distribution. We Aren’t Using the Right Experts By Philip Siegel                January 10, 2021 The development of COVID vaccines has been an enormous achievement of our

Honored to Receive a MoMath Rosenthal Prize!

Lauren SiegelEvents, Sharing IdeasLeave a Comment

Title:  Engagement with Ratio and Proportion:  Building a tool to deepen understanding.  The full, final  lesson plan will be available soon here and on the MoMath website. The MoMath Rosenthal Prize is for Innovation and Inspiration in Math Teaching.  I wrote up a lesson on proportional calipers that was selected as the 2021 runner up prize.  The best part is that