Equation App (Pt 2 in series) – Solving Equations – Why Use a Calculator?

Solving equations is a large part of the mathematics curriculum as students move into those upper-level concepts. If we look at the Common Core Standards, students start solving one-step equations for one variable in grade 6, adding on to the complexity as they move into higher mathematics where they have multiple variables and simultaneous equations and complex functions. It is important to help students understand what solving equations really represents – i.e. determining the values of unknown quantities and to help them solve them in a variety of ways (i.e. graphically, using a table, using symbolic manipulation, and yes….using technology such as a graphing calculator). And connecting those unknown quantities to real-world contexts is a big part of this as well. Students should solve in multiple ways and express their solutions in multiple ways so that they really understand the inter-connectedness of the multiple representations (graphs, tables, symbolic) and what all these quantities mean in context.

That said, many teachers are reluctant to use the equation solver that is often part of a graphing calculator because, as I have heard multiple times, it does the work for the students and just gives them the answer. True. But – there are ways to utilize the equation solver so that it supports the learning, not just ‘gives the solution’. The obvious way, and probably the most frequent way, is to have students solve the equation (s) by hand, showing all their inverse operations/work, maybe even sketching a graph of the solutions, and then using the graphing calculator to check their solution. Very valid way for students to both do the work, show their steps, and verify their solutions. But – the reverse is also a great way to try to help students learn HOW to solve equations. Working backwards, so to speak.

By this, I mean, use the equation solver to give students the answer first, and then see if they can figure out how to use symbolic manipulation and inverse operations to reach that outcome. As an example, start with a simple linear equation, such as 2x – 5 = 31. Have students plug this into the equation solver and get the solution of 18. Then, in pairs or small groups, have students look at the original problem and try to figure out how they can manipulate the coefficients and constants using inverse operations to get to that solution of 18. So maybe, plug the 18 in for the x.  What would they have to do to the other numbers in order to isolate that 18?  This forces students to use inverse operations to try to ‘undo’ the problem and end up with 18. In doing so, they are discovering the idea that to isolate a variable, you have to undo all the things that happened to it.  Give them a harder problem. Same process….and let them get to a point where they try to solve using their ‘understanding’ of inverse, and then they use the calculator to ‘check’.  The idea here is students are figuring it out by starting with the solution and working backwards to understand the process for solving equations. And they develop the process themselves versus memorizing it.

Rather than thinking of the calculator as a solution tool, think of it as another way to help students discover where those solutions come from.

Here’s a quick video on using the Equation App (solver) on the CG50. The process is the same on Casio’s other graphing calculators. This is another installment in the app exploration series, started last week with the Physium App.

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Origami – The Math Behind the Paper Folding

I am about to start teaching an online geometry course, and it has me missing some of the things I use to do with my students to help them discover relationships, and work with angles and symmetry, which was origami. Origami is the art of paper-folding – and using it in geometry is a great hands-on and visual tool to help students discover angle relationships, symmetry, linear relationships.

Origami is something I am sure most of you are familiar with and maybe have even attempted to create some origami art yourself. I have two friends who are origami wizards and often post their creations on FB – and it’s pretty amazing the shapes they create. When I recently went to the Museum of Math in NYC there was a whole exhibit devoted to Origami.

In my class, obviously, we did relatively simple constructs – folding one piece of paper into things like cubes, birds, shapes. The focus being on the folding and shapes created from each fold and looking at the angles and relationships that developed after each fold. But – as I have discovered, there is some really complex math behind origami, and really complex shapes that are created all from one sheet of paper that are simply astounding. I just found this Ted Talk from 2008 by Robert Langdon that discusses the mathematics behind Origami and how because of mathematics, folds that before were impossible are now possible, allowing for origami constructions that are astounding. Those of you who teach geometry, I think this will be very interesting to you, though I think other math subjects as well will find some applications. At the end of the video there is also a link to some templates for folding some more intricate origami constructs.

 

CG50 – What Are All Those Apps?

As many of you know, I post quick videos in the blog to show different things about the Casio calculators or math or teaching. Many of these are posted on my YouTube Channel. I will occasionally get comments from viewers asking questions, and I do my best to answer them. If I can’t answer the question, I find someone who can, or research until I do have a response. Just the other day, when I was asked “how do you use the constants on the CG-50 calculator”, I was not quite sure what was being asked, since I tend to use the calculator from a mathematics teaching perspective, and hadn’t explored using constants (from a science perspective) and wasn’t even sure what was meant by the ‘constants’ in this particular question (as it could mean the constants in a given equation).  Turns out the viewer was asking about the Physium Menu/App on the calculator, and how to get the constants from these tables and values into calculations. This is something I have honestly never used because I am not a science teacher and therefore rarely, if ever, have need for this app. But – it got me curious and seeking out an answer (which I did find and explore so I could give a reasonable answer).

In my ignorance, I realized that there are many apps on the CG50 (and other Casio graphing calculators) that I have never really explored, not just the Physium App. Mostly I focus on the most-used menu items – Run Matrix (to do calculations), Graph (to work with functions and graphs), Table (functions using table representations), Equation (solving equations), and Picture Plot. But there are a lot of other menu items that I need to explore and learn to utilize since they all are useful for different contexts and applications. This is now a goal of mine – to try to learn and explore the basics of the other menu items (apps) of the CG50 (and other) graphing calculator, starting with the Physium Menu/app. Here’s what I have discovered:

The Physium application has the following capabilities (so science teachers, take note!!)

Periodic Table of Elements

• You can display the periodic table of elements
• The table shows the elements atomic number, atomic symbol, atomic weight and other info
• Elements can be searched for by element name, atomic symbol, atomic number or atomic weight

Fundamental Physical Constants

• You can display fundamental physical constants, grouped by category to make it easier
• You can edit the physical constants and save them as required
• You can store physical constants in the Alpha memory and use these saved constants in calculations in the RUN-MAT menu/application

Now, I am still not a science teacher, so this would not be a menu item I will use often, but I wanted to do a quick video of what I discovered in my own exploration.  And – there is a link to the how-to guide for the Physium Menu/App for those of you interested in exploring more. If you have a CG10 or other graphing calculator from Casio and don’t have the Physium menu/app, you can download it here.

 

Elevators and Number Sense

Number sense should develop early, and what simpler way to do it then to start with elevators?

Elevator, Vicenza, Italy

Why elevators you ask? Well, I just returned from 2 weeks in Italy. Partly for work: training elementary math teachers in Vicenza, Italy on College & Career Ready Standards for UT Dana Center International Fellows and Department of Defense Education Activities; and partly for leisure: touring Venice, Cinque Terre, Florence, Tuscany and Rome with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law. The first thing I noticed was the elevators have negative numbers to indicate those floors below ground zero (i.e. what we usually call floor 1 or Lobby in the U.S.)   It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this – in England, in Paris, in Germany – all these other countries indicate on their elevators the ground floor to be 0, the floors above ground 0 are 1, 2, 3…. and the floors below ground zero are -1, -2, -3….

This way of numbering elevators makes sense. Much more sense than Floor 1, or Lobby and then Basement, Basement2 (or LL1, LL2) – which is our typical way of indicating the ground floor (1) and the floors below ground level (Basements/Lower Levels). If you were a young child living in these countries and taking the lifts (or elevators), you are regularly exposed to integer numbers – with a contextual connection that the ground floor of a building is ground 0, and the floors below the ground are negative numbers, and the floors above the ground are positive numbers. It may not even be explicitly explained to young children, though they would be using the terms ‘negative 1’ or ‘negative 2’ to go down below the ground floor. They will have this repeated exposure so when they are ‘officially’ taught about negative numbers in school, they have an immediate connection to prior knowledge about the numbers in an lift/elevator and can make a real-world connection. Negative numbers won’t be new or hard to understand because it’s just the numbers in the elevator. Or – the numbers of the temperature, because let’s not forget, these countries also use the Celsius temperature scale, where freezing is 0, and anything above 0 degrees is above freezing and getting warmer (positive) and anything below 0 degrees is getting colder (negative). The further from 0 in either direction, the warmer or colder you are – again, real-world connection and a contextual understanding of integers.

Number sense. Number lines. Integers. Real-world connections. Just from elevators and temperature scales.

This repeated exposure, informal as it may be, is developing an intuitive understanding of numbers and their real-world meaning. And when students are then exposed to number lines and positive and negative numbers more formally, in a school setting, they already get what that means because it is familiar to them. They can apply what they already know to ‘mathematics’. The formalization makes sense, and connections make sense, and understanding is that much deeper.  This is different in the U.S., where students often struggle with the idea of ‘negative’ numbers and number lines and the distance from zero because we are teaching them something new.  We don’t have a real-world exposure to negative numbers because we use LL or B1 to represent lower than 0, our ground floor is never called 0, it’s 1 or Lobby or G (ground). Our temperature doesn’t have 0 as the freezing mark – it has 32 degrees Farenheit. Think how much easier it would be to connect negative numbers (those numbers smaller than zero) to negative floors or negative temperatures. Freezing makes sense at 0. Negative temperatures are colder than freezing. Positive temperatures are warmer than freezing. 32 degrees – not quite the same one-to-one connection to a number line, is it?

Anyway – my point is that something as simple as changing the numbers on an elevator to integer representations would go a long way in helping young children develop number sense early on so that by the time they get to school, they already have a natural understanding of positive and negative numbers. Early on they would be exposed to the idea of 0 being the ground level, positive numbers mean higher floors or farther away from ground zero, and negative numbers mean lower floors, below the ground, and the further you go below ground, the more negative you get, the farther away from zero you are. Number lines would then be ‘recognizable’ because there’s a contextual connection. (If we could change our temperature scale to Celsius that would be great too, though that one is a lot harder to do).

Relabel elevator buttons to reflect numbers on a number line – a simple change that could go a long way in developing informal number sense in children.