Why do students say these things?
What are we doing this for?
• What are we doing this for?
• When will I need this?
• …….
Linking GCSE mathematics topics
and real life
Aims
The Sudanese 50 dinar
• Looking at ways that links can be made
between mathematics and real life.
• Connections rather than applications.
• Some genuine applications of
mathematics can seem remote to many
14/15/16 year olds.
Spot the difference
• You can find “Spot the Difference” using
Google Images.
• Saving and inserting into a Word
document allows you to copy and cut the
image into the two separate pictures.
• You can reflect one of them using “flip” on
the Word draw menu.
• Is it easier to spot the difference with the
translated or reflected images?
How could we find out?
• I have heard that:
“On average women
say 22000 words a
day, men say 7000.”
Is this true? If it is
true, how much of the
day do women talk
for?
• In early Feb 2007, the
Yorkshire Evening
Post offered a prize of
“your height in £1
coins” – how much
would you win?
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Really Useful Box
• How many (500 ml) bottles of water will I
get in this box? Guess – how can you
work it out?
• There is a 20 litre Really Useful Box –
what do you think its measurements are?
Water Use
• The average
European uses 200
litres of water every
day.
• North Americans
use 400 litres.
• How many litres of
water a day do you
think the average
person in the
developing world
uses?
The average person in the developing world uses 10
litres of water every day for their drinking, washing
and cooking. This is the same amount used in the
average flush of a UK toilet.
Calculating water use
• Various internet sites give information to
help students calculate their use of water
http://www.k12science.org/curriculum/drai
nproj/data.html also has data submitted
from schools (mostly in USA)
• Southern Water produce a factsheet
http://www.southernwater.co.uk/pdfs/educ
ationAndEnviro/educationResource/ks3AD
ripInTime/dit_fact_sheets.pdf
A puzzle from Number Corner
The weight of water
• The average amount of water that women in
Africa and Asia carry on their heads is 20 litres.
A litre of water weighs 1 kg. What else can you
think of that weighs 20 kg?
• What does a waterbed weigh?
• A standard double mattress measures W135 x
L190cm – waterbed mattresses range in depth
from 5cm to 23 cm.
20% extra free
• Bottles offering “extra free” are often
similar in shape to the original bottle.
• Are 1 litre and 2 litre cola bottles
similar?
• How do the heights of similar bottles
compare?
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Strange Dice
A
B
C
• Opposite faces are
numbered the same.
• Two players roll
different dice; the
highest score wins.
• Which is the best die
to have?
Coach journey
• Looking out of the coach window on an
evening journey, I saw this:
• What questions could you ask?
• What mathematical skills are being used?
Extensions
• What if you throw your die twice and add
the totals, which is best?
• Can you make a set of four strange dice?
Useful resources
• File for leaflets and magazine/newspaper
articles;
• Digital camera for photos of maths in real
life;
• Notebook for ideas – look out for wrong
labels in supermarkets – special offers that
aren’t or price per litre that’s wrong.
A quotation I find inspiring
“It is a curious fact about the human mind
that people will work harder to do
something which captures their
imagination than they will for any practical
purpose”
mathematician Ian Richards of the
University of Minnesota
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