Walking in Mathland

Natalie Turbiville teaches Algebra and Pre-Algebra to 7th and 8th graders in Atlanta Georgia. She writes about her adventures as a math teacher in her blog called Walking in Mathland. After reading a few of her posts I call already tell she is very passionate not only about math but about teaching as well. She comes up with amazing real world examples to go along with the concepts in which she is teaching. People always say: “Why are we learning this? We are never going to use this in real life!” After reading her blog I beg to differ.

Barbie Bungee - Linear Extrapolation (Line of Best Fit) was the first post of Turbiville’s that I read. She taught the concept of the line of best fit by letting her students launch barbies off the side of a breeze way at their school. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot more intriguing than sitting through a lecture. The project: “Each group of 4 brought a Barbie/action figure and measured the distance of the bungee jump with 2 rubber bands, then 4 rubber bands, and then 6, 8, 10, and 12 rubber bands.” They then launched their barbies and collected the data. You could tell by the videos Turbiville posted that her students had a lot of fun. They made a connection to the material. Now they will never forget it.

Friends, Vegas, and Probability was the second post of Turbiville’s that I read. In this one her real world example wasn’t exactly student friendly. She talked about how probability is a “game of chance”. What she meant by that is gambling. She used an episode of the TV show “Friends” to demonstrate what she was talking about. In this particular episode Monica and Chandler are in Vegas at a casino rolling dice to decide whether or not they should get married. Not exactly the best role models for students. Either way the whole concept was that Monica had a 5/36 chance in rolling a sum of 8 and a 1/36 chance in rolling a “hard eight” (two fours). That’s math expressed in a real world situation.