## Trying to find math inside everything else

### Vimes’ Theory of Socioeconomic Injustice

As I was planning my linear functions unit, I noticed a problem about someone choosing between two electric companies, with the standard idea of one having a larger start-up cost but a lower monthly rate. I realized these problems are very common, and they reminded me of of a quotation from my favorite author, Terry Pratchett:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

– Men at Arms

I wanted to share this concept with my class, so I looked for problems. One thing I realized, though, was that many of these problems involved one person choosing between two things. This makes it so there is one clearly correct answer.

But oftentimes, in the real world, people don’t have a choice. One person can afford the upfront cost to pay less in the long run, but another person can’t, and winds up paying more overall, as in the Pratchett quote above. So I decided to reframe the problems as comparisons between two people, to highlight that injustice.

The lesson started with a model problem, then I gave each group a different problem from the set below.

(I went through this page of unisex names to make all of the problems gender-neutral.)

Each table worked on a different problem (with some differentiation on which group worked on which), then they jigsawed and, in their new groups, they shared out their problems and how they solved them. Then, most importantly, they looked for similarities and differences between the problems.

We then read the Pratchett quote and discussed its meaning, and students had to agree or disagree (making a claim and warrant for each). We had a good discussion on whether it really applied to today’s world or not.

### The Cold War

In my first year teaching I came up with this activity for working with quadratic-linear systems, based in the Cold War and missile defense. It didn’t work as well as I hoped, mostly because it was too complicated, but I like the core of the idea. Maybe now, with more experience and the brainstorming power of the MTBoS, we can think of a way to make it work. But first, I’ll describe what .i actually did.

Students entered the room to find the desks rearranged – four big group tables, and the room split down the middle by a wall of desks, representing the “Iron Curtain.” Each student was then randomly assigned to one of four groups: US Missile Command, US Missile Defense, USSR Missile Command, and USSR Missile Defense. (Only one student, the son of the Georgian consulate, demanded to be switched from the USSR group to the US side.)

Each student then had two roles – one of the roles was their job on the team. Treasurer, secretary, chief engineer, etc. These roles were public. Their other roles were secret – they were things like Double Agent, Handler, FBI Agent, Innocent.

The idea was that each missile team was trying to build a missile that could hit the other country, while bypassing their missile defense. And the missile defense teams were trying to shoot down the missiles. The missiles were represented by quadratic equations and the missile defense by linear functions. But the best way to find out what the other side was planning is through espionage.

Of course, the thing they’ll probably learn is that the missile defense fails and everyone dies – we all lose the cold war.

Below are the files I made way back when. What are your ideas to make this workable?

### Elimination and Solving Equations

I bet you have all seen the following mistake:

mathmistakes.org

There’s a problem here, but it’s certainly an understandable problem. It comes from, dare I say, a trick that we all teach. And it’s a trick we all think isn’t one – adding the same thing on both sides of the equation.

When I did my research project in grad school, I found that many students like the elimination method of solving a system of linear equations because of the way the elements lined up and made it very clear what to do – and this was true of students who used elimination well but could not solve a linear equation normally. It was then that I realized that elimination is actually the core of what we teach about solving equations – we just gloss over it.

It all comes down to two properties of equality: the reflexive property and the additive property.

Using elimination works because we have two different equations, but we add them together, like so:

$3x + 2y = 20\\2x-2y=4\\ \line(1,0){75}\\5x\hspace{24 pt}=24$

But the same thing is true when we normally solve a linear equation. It’s just that one of the equations is generated using the reflexive property.

$-12 + 3x = 20\\+12 \hspace{24 pt}=+12\\ \line(1,0){75}\\\indent\indent3x=32$

So actually a lot of things about solving equations become clear when I use elimination, which is why I try to introduce those ideas earlier. The goal here is that if we always have two equations that we are adding together (or subtracting, or dividing), then we can eliminate those mistakes where students add the same quantity twice on the same side.

(Basically, the additive property of equality is often formulated as $a = b$, therefore $a + c = b + c$. But I think it’s better formulated as $a = b$, and $c = d$, therefore $a + c = b + d$. And sometimes we use $c=c$ instead of $c=d$.)

But it’d be great if they were introduced even earlier than when I do it – such as in middle school. Diving deep into the properties of equality, along with rate/ratio/proportion, are probably the two most important things for preparing for algebra.

$\line(1,0){400}$

While we’re talking about elimination, I want to bring up how it’s actually used. Today my kids were working on my Potato 3-Act problem. When solving that problem, you create the following system of equations:

$2b+5r=\2.83$

$2b+3r=\1.97$

So we solved by subtracting the two equations, giving r = \$0.43 (the price of one red potato). Normally, at this point in the process, to solve for b we would use substitution, something like this:

$2b + 3(\0.43)=\1.97$

$2b + \1.29=\1.97$

And then you’d solve from there. But I realized that that’s not strictly necessary. Instead, we talked about what 3 red potatoes are worth, and wrote that as an equation, too. So now we had 2 equations, again, and we could use elimination.

$2b+3r=\1.97\\\indent3r=\1.29\\\line(1,0){75}\\2b\hspace{24 pt}=\0.68$

No substitution necessary.

ETA: Additional examples of solving linear equations using elimination, at the request of Anna Hester:

### Classroom Research

Back in grad school, instead of one big thesis we had to do two research projects – one math research and one classroom research. I don’t think my math research is particularly noteworthy (it was about automating the instrumentation of a harmony given a melody, in the style of John Williams), but I did like my classroom research. Towards the end of the program I was talking with my of my classmates and we said how we both enjoyed it and could see going back into a program to do research in the future. I don’t know if that’s still true for me, but the future holds many possibilities.

The focus question for my research was, “Given the three standard methods of solving systems of equations, which methods do students prefer and why?” I had some ideas going into it that held true, some that were thrown out, and some interesting other ones. For example, some of the students preferred a certain method just because it was the one they learned first, even if they knew it wasn’t the best one. Visually-inclined students did not prefer graphing, as I expected, but rather elimination, because of the way the numbers lined up. Some students changed which method they used in order to avoid something – one student had trouble solving equations with x on both sides, so the method they used was the one that didn’t lead to that scenario.

You can see more of the findings, and the whole paper, below if you are interested. And yes, if you read it, you’ll notice that the pseudonyms I chose for the students were all based on Doctor Who companions.

### The Archimedes Lab

I love this lab, but I’m sure it can be improved, so I’d love to hear feedback in the comments.

When I was student teaching at Banana Kelly, they had a combined math/science program that often had many lab activities, both math labs and science labs. But I noticed the Systems of Equations unit didn’t really have a lab, so I set out to make one. I created the Archimedes lab because of that.

The story of Archimedes and the Crown of Syracuse says that he was able to determine that the crown was not pure gold by using mass and volume. We start by watching a short video about the story. (I had assigned the video as homework, but no one watched it. While my video homework watching rates aren’t stellar, they’ve never been this bad. I blame the fact that it’s been a while: the last video was in December.)

Then I tell them that we can do Archimedes one better. It’s been over 2000 years since he lived and we have algebra and precise tools on our side: we can figure out exactly how much gold was stolen, not just if some was.

To demonstrate this, we built several Mystery Blocks out of two different materials. Back at BK, we had lots of different materials in the science closet to use. Because the students would know the type of material (brass, aluminum, wood, etc) but not the size and shape, they would have to use density to solve the problem. (But I had seeded the story throughout the whole unit.) The density kit I requested last year never arrived, though, so I had to scrounge around for something, and I found the perfect thing: Cuisinaire Rods.

I noticed that, despite what I expected, the longer Cuisinaire rods are much less dense that the small single cubes. So I used some amount of cubes and some amount of rods to make the mystery blocks. Then I simply give the kids one cube, one rod, the block, a scale, and a ruler, and ask them to figure out how many if each kind are in the block.

This lab was much more procedural when I first made it, but I’ve embraced the problem-solving classroom since then. And while my students were unsure of what to do, I feel like we’ve built up to this kind of unstructured problem, and most of them took to it well.

When they thought they had a solution, I would press them on it. “Why do you think it’s 5 yellow blocks and 5 cubes?” If they responded that that matches up in size to the block, I would point out any others do also, like 4 yellow and 10 cubes. I would implore them to use the tools available to them. (We also talked about mass, volume, and density in the warm-up.) If they told me some combination gave them the right mass, I would point out that their volume would be off. If they told me no combination gave them the right volume AND right mass, I would ask why. Most would identify the tape/foil/wrapping paper as the culprit.

Most importantly, if they gave me a solution that was well supported, even if incorrect, I told them there was only one way to find out if they were right: unwrap the mystery block and see. The excitement at each table when they got to that point was palpable. One student said it felt like Christmas. If they were right, they were ecstatic. If they were not, they tried to figure out where they went wrong.

When I first made this lab, I put it at the end of the Systems unit, thinking they would need those tools. Now I have the confidence to put it at the beginning, and let them figure it out. No one used equations explicitly to solve the problem, but they definitely grappled with the idea that two separate constraints need to both be satisfied in order to solve a problem, which is an important understanding for systems.

This post is getting a little long, so I’ll probably split off into another posts with problems I had with the lesson, things that went well, and a call for suggestions. I just wanted to get this out there. It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged, because I’ve had a lot going on in my life. So I want to get back to it.

### The Lab Sheet

The Archimedes Lab

Accompanying Graph

### 3 Acts – Potatoes

I tried this out today in class (and will repeat tomorrow), and it worked out quite well. So now I want to share, my first 3 Acts problem.

## Act 1

The question I intended to be asked was “How many of each potato do I need for the recipe?” or variants such as “What does he do now that the scale is broken?” or “Did he buy enough potatoes?” Those were all asked, along with some others.

## Act 2

The video shows some things (how many potatoes I bought the first time, and the cashier says the totals), but it’s easier to lay that out when the students ask.

After that, they also wanted to know how much the potatoes cost, so I provided that.

But that’s all the information I can give: my scale is broken and I didn’t take the receipts from the cashier. Luckily, this is enough.

## Act 3

After we calculated the weight, we compared when I weighed them in my “new” scale.

I wish I had my digital scale for a better Act 3, but it’s actually broken (and the calculations I had to do when it was inspired this problem) and the analog was cheaper. The solutions you calculate (.36 lb and .43 lb) are pretty close to the values on the scale (which I peg at .37 lb and .5 lb).

The problem itself, in terms of the system of equations involved, is not that complicated (because I am using it to introduce the concept of elimination), but for the students who solved it quickly, I had a trickier problem up my sleeve:

## Extension

What if I had bought 3 Idaho potatoes on the second trip? How can I figure out how much each one weighs now?

Potatoes.zip