Monday, April 14, 2008
Using Statistics in Everyday
During my student teaching experience, I found many students asking when we are going to use certain topics. For example, the 10th grade students thought it was a joke when I began to introduce the imaginary numbers system and did not know when they would use them again! My suggestion for teachers is to make a PowerPoint presentation at the beginning of each topic to introduce the topic and discuss real life applications!
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3 comments:
Powerpoints are a great use of technology within the classroom. I find powerpoints can be made into such a way that introducing new topics in every unit or section will enhance learning! Powerpoints provide visualizations for students to see how mathematics does apply to every day life.
I like your idea of using PowerPoint to show applications for students. I think that this would be helpful because you can include graphics or even show a website link in the PowerPoint that would pertain to your topic. I bet students would enjoy this more than the teacher stating how they would use this in "real life". (Might seem more believable!)
Alright, so I had to go to google to look up where imaginary numbers are used because I had no idea. One link is the math forum@drexel and Dr. Math:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/53606.html
"Another important application of complex numbers to the real world is in physics. In quantum mechanics, one cannot say with precision where a particle is. You can only give an probability distribution of its position in space. And the only way to calculate the distributions is
using complex variables. Unfortunately, this is even harder to explain, but such calculations have to be done for almost any
calculations about nuclear reactions.
So there you have it. The nuclear power plants that generate the electricty to recharge your iPod may use imaginary numbers. :)
Thanks for the Blog.
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