22 March 1999 Vol. 4, No. 12
THE MATH FORUM INTERNET NEWS
Math, Baseball, SF Giants | Online Math Apps - ThinkQuest Jr |
DP Virtual Studio
MATH, BASEBALL, AND THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Linda Uhrenholt, Pacific Bell Education First
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/baseball/
An interdisciplinary unit for elementary and middle school
students by a fan who was first taken to a game by her aunt.
Students answer questions and follow links to Internet sites
to research the cost of travel expenses, food, and tickets,
determining the cost of attending a Giants game, the time
it takes to get to the park, and more.
Guided questions and useful links are provided for a variety
of problems, including:
- sabermetrics (the mathematics of the game of baseball)
- ticket pricing
- peanuts and french fries
- attendance and food
- salaries and statistics
- buying Giants magazines
- payrolls and salaries
- individual batting averages
- team batting averages
- bats and balls
- earned run averages
- Hall of Fame t-shirts
- cleaning up the trash
- Pacific Bell Park construction
In conclusion, students write reports itemizing their total
expenses at the game, find examples of math used in baseball
not touched on in the activities, and construct their own
definitions of baseball.
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ONLINE MATH APPLICATIONS
Leung, Jiang, Jiang, Chiu, Klopfer, Chiu
ThinkQuest Junior 1998
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/
Activities, examples, problems, and online quizzes about math
applied to real world situations, created by a team of 5th
and 6th graders with their teacher-coaches:
- Investing
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/Investing/investin.htm
Learn real-life math using a variety of investment
vehicles: compound interest, bank deposits, CDs,
stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
- Music
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/Music/music.htm
What does math have to do with music? How does music
affect student performance on tests? What's the Mozart
effect?
- History
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/History/history.htm
Math started around 2,000 B.C. - read about such great
mathematicians as Euclid, Pascal, Newton, and Gauss,
people who developed key concepts in algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, and calculus.
- Science
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/Science/science.htm
Study math concepts: the power of doubling, base 2
binary math, unit conversions, and scientific notation.
- Trips
http://tqjunior.advanced.org/4116/Trip_Planning/trip.htm
Carry out a break-even analysis of car rental, explore
pattern recognition of routes between cities, calculate
the cost tradeoff of driving various sizes of cars,
study road safety, and relate braking distance to
reaction time.
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DP (DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING) VIRTUAL STUDIO
http://www.maths.mu.oz.au/~moshe/dp/DPstudio.html
Problems and puzzles from WORMS, the World-Wide-Web for
Operations Research and Management Science site directed
by "Chief Spider" Moshe Sniedovich:
- Knapsack problem - fill a knapsack with available items
so as to maximize the total value of the items
- Towers of Noah - the Tower of Hanoi, with animals
- 8 Easy Pieces - restore the tiles to their original
position as quickly as possible
- 8 Queens Puzzle - place N queens on an 8x8 chessboard
so that they do not attack each other
- Travelling Spider Problem - a variation of the travelling
salesman problem, in which a spider must visit n Web
sites, each only once, commencing and terminating the
tour at his/her home site: determine a tour that
minimizes the travel time
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WORMS is a grassroots, user-driven WWW site established by
the Operations Research Group (ORG) of the Department of
Mathematics, University of Melbourne, Australia. WORMS' main
objective is to complement the formal online activities of
OR/MS societies worldwide. Features include JavaORjavA (see
what JavaScript and OR can do together); jokes and anecdotes,
FAQs, a mathematical programming glossary, and more.
http://www.maths.mu.oz.au/~worms/
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