1 Will the Best Candidate Win? Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 9–Postsecondary Professional Commentary: Students learn about various voting methods, ways in which these methods can be manipulated to achieve certain outcomes, and the impossibility of fair elections when more than two alternatives are available. Plurality voting is the most familiar method of voting.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: Students plan a road trip, starting in Cleveland, and visiting friends in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Boston. With the price of gas so high, they want to figure out the shortest travel route to save on expenses.... 3 Outel Semiconductor: Recruiting Circuit Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: Students explore a variation of the traveling salesman problem based on cost: What is the cheapest path through a network that will hit all nodes and return to the starting point? Activity sheets guide students through a brute-force approach and then a nearest-neighbor algorithm to find the cheapest route for a college recruiter to follow in... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: First, students review Pascal's Triangle by completing and discussing the entries of the first eight rows. They then determine the total number of possible girl/boy combinations in a five-child family.... 5 Explorations with Chance Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 5–10 Professional Commentary: This site describes three creative games that give students an opportunity to apply concepts related to probability. Students are asked to determine whether the games are fair, and if unfair, how they might be changed.... 6 NAEP Assessment Item, Grade 12: Solve a problem involving color patterns Resource Type: Assessments Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 8–12 Professional Commentary: Students are asked to solve a problem involving color patterns and illustrate their answer. This extended constructed-response question is a "medium hard" test item used in grade 12 of the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (see About NAEP).... 7 ODE Assessment Item, Grade 8: Rolling Two Number Cubes Resource Type: Assessments Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grade 8 Professional Commentary: Jerry rolls one red cube and one green cube. Students must determine how many possible outcomes satisfy a given condition. This multiple-choice question is a sample item used in the 2008 Ohio Grade 8 Achievement Test (see Overview of Ohio's Assessment System).... 8 NAEP Assessment Item, Grade 12: Find the Number of Arrangements Possible Resource Type: Assessments Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 8–12 Professional Commentary: Students find the number of arrangements, or permutations, of 5 different houses being built in a row. They have the option of using a calculator.... 9 ODE Assessment Item, Grade 10: How many different jackets are available Resource Type: Assessments Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 8–10 Professional Commentary: Students are asked to determine how many different combinations of features are available in a jacket. This multiple-choice question is a sample item used in the 2008 Ohio Graduation Test (see Overview of Ohio's Assessment System). The URL link (above) takes the user directly to the OGT test item (PDF), with access to performance data, complexity... 10 NAEP Assessment Item, Grade 12: List All Possible Arrangements of X, Y, and Z Resource Type: Assessments Discipline: Mathematics Grades: Grades 5–12 Professional Commentary: Students must list all possible permutations of three distinct objects. This constructed-response question is a sample test item used in grade 12 in the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress (see About NAEP).... |