Installing Cabinet Hardware (or, Fun with Fractions)

So I was installing cabinet hardware today...

...and some math happened! See, I had measured one drawer to be 17+3/8 inches wide. To place the pull correctly, I needed to find the center line of the drawer. So I needed to divide 17 3/8 by 2... not exactly compatible numbers.

Let's look at a few of my options.

Option 1: Use a calculator. 

My laptop is sitting right here. It has a built-in calculator:

A Question of Balance

This post is based on a student comment that caught my eye while grading. The data below shows the sodium content (in mg) for 23 brands of "regular" Peanut Butter.

The student wrote one of the following two statements in defense of choosing the preferred measure of center.

1) The data are balanced on each side of the median.
2) The data are balanced on each side of the mean.

Which statement do you think is more correct? In what sense might someone think the other one is correct, too?

Ready... GO!!

Why Precision Matters

The following home workshop was used with preservice teachers in an effort to highlight the importance of attending to precision when doing mathematics investigations.

Home Workshop - Angles of Polygons by hasenbaj

Phronesis? (Using Tools Strategically)

I was preparing a lesson on representing data with dot plots and box plots. The goal was to help students recognize the pros & cons of each type of visual display, among other things (like simply making sure everyone knew how to construct one).

But it turned into something more powerful, at least for a moment, and I thought I would share that moment with you via this post.

The lesson also built off the previous session where we had used "MAD Minute" type tasks to generate data. You know, like these:

 

Lots of kids are good at those. I was good at them. Many of my preservice elementary teacher students said they loved them too. "Oh man, I loved doing these!" But you didn't love them if you weren't good at them. And we had that discussion: For some kids, these high-stakes timed worksheets were sources of extreme anxiety.