Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Amanda and Maisie's Supah Dupah Math Questionaire

1. Why do people hate math?

People don't hate math (duh, no one hates math), they hate learning it. The process to get an answer takes so long, and people don't inherently speak the "language" of math. Another reason why people may not like math, is because they think they will never use it in life. Usually adults look back and regret not paying attention to their math lessons, because it would have made their jobs easier.

2. Do you like or hate math and why? (before Booker T and after)

Amanda- I neither like nor hate math. I've learned in my past, to hate math, but it was just because I didn't think it was important, plus, some of my teachers didn't make it so interesting. Now that I've come to Booker T. , I like it a little more than before because of my teacher and how she teaches it. She shows us how we would use it in art, which is why we are at this school in the first place. Thank you Mrs. J!

Maisie-I actually really like math (don't hurt me). This is because it is so straight forward, and there is almost always one answer, and you just have to learn the steps. and BAM. it's correct.

3. Do you think math is important for "artists"?

As visual artists, we think that math is definitely important for artists to learn. For example: in order to be a good artist, we have to have a knowledge from all different sources-including our other academics. But there's a lot of straight up math that goes into art anyway, such as scale factor in designing and planning (there's such a thing as "mathematical beauty" using the golden ratio for faces and most any other composition: http://www.advocateenterprise.org/img/vitruvian.jpg
http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT669/Student.Folders/Frietag.Mark/Homepage/Goldenratio/image19.gif
http://news.puggal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/golden-ratio-face1.gif
and for fun the dove beauty commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

4. How can math education improve?

we believe that there are no bland subjects, only bland teachers. the key to having fun (or staying awake) in math is having an energetic teacher that gets the class involved, and gives examples of real life situations that what they are learning applies to. our recommendation: hire really good teachers.

TAHDAH!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Post #2 Data Correlation and Manipulation

On Thursday in Algebra 2 Pre-AP, we discussed and learned about Data Correlation and Manipulation. Data Correlation is a statistical technique of comparing if or how strongly pairs of variables relate to each other. We watched an interesting video on it where the speaker discussed how family size and life-span in different countries were related and how they changed over time. It was conveyed through a graph, and the larger the dot, the larger the population that country had.
I came upon this website just now, and thought it was very interesting and eye-opening, though I'm not sure that it relates to Data correlation directly.
http://www.worldometers.info/
This website shows a lot of different real-time statistics before your eyes and is interesting to look at. You are able to compare the rate of one to another, for example, how many bicicles are being made this year, and how many cars are being made. You can see that bicicles are being made at a faster rate than cars.
Though this is just one comparison, many many more are able to be made when looking through this website.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Numero Uno

Well, this is my first post, and I don't really know what to write about. This thing may come in handy sometime, but for now, I'm not sure. I can come back in the future and keep a log of my high school days. =)
Booker T. is going real well, though I still compare it to LHS.. I can't really help it. I'm still getting used to the school and not knowing anyone there. I was so used to seeing faces of my best friends and people I saw everyday, but now I'm in a whole new environment in a different city.
Well, I know it's gonna help me a lot for my future, so there's a big plus!
Hm.. I guess that's all for now! I can't wait to see what else this school has to offer! So far, I'm impressed!
-a