MATHEMATICS/

NUMERACY

Moments in Mathematics

Junior School

As part of their statistics topic, our Year 7 ELHES students worked on a creative piece to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the content. 

Here is a statistics story written by Jenny:

   One day in the town of maths-ville mean, median and mode were having a discussion. “do you ever wonder what each of us are worth?” mean asked, “you know what, I do” replied mode “For all we know I could be worth 265 or 62 but we will never know.” said median. “Mr stem will know he has alllllllll the answers. “that’s a great idea the chorused and got up to walk down the path arm in arm.

   They arrive at Mr stem’s house they ring the doorbell, and he comes as quick as a flash. “hello, mean, median and mode how can I help you?” Mr stem asked with a beaming smile. “we would like to know how much we are all worth” replied mode with a smile just as beaming as his. “that is a great question, I am going to show you a set of numbers and you have to find out what you’re worth.” 

   Here are the numbers: 67, 73, 30, 72, 82, 50, 45, 76, 80. “Ok mode you go first.” To calculate your worth is that you have to find the most recurring number. “In this set of numbers there is no more than one number so there is no mode darn.” “I will go next” said median happily. To calculate how much I am worth we need to find the middle number, but first we have order, the numbers from smallest to largest like this:  30, 45, 67, 72, 76, 80, 82. The middle number is 72. “Yay I am worth 72,” said median. “me now,” said mean. To calculate the mean, you have to add up every single number and that adds up to 575. Now I need to divide that sum by the number of scores in my data set... that's 63.9 (to one decimal place)!  “thank-you Mr stem they chorused and left to have a good day.

Senior School

For the start of this semester, our Foundation Mathematics students have been looking at geometric shapes both in 2-dimensions and 3-dimensions. They have been consolidating their knowledge of these shapes including how to show that lines are parallel or the same length, how to find areas and perimeters of 2-dimensional shapes, and finding surface areas and volumes of 3-dimensional solids.

They will be applying this knowledge to buildings and floor plans, specifically using their knowledge of basic figures to analyse and calculate areas of living spaces. By considering properties of basic shapes, they will be creating and representing these living spaces using composite shapes. They will then consider the costs involved when designing a living space in order to have an idea of the price of renovating or creating spaces in a building.

Family Fun

We hope you had a restful holiday break and enjoyed the tangram challenge! Here are some more riddles to get your brain working again this term. Answers will be revealed in the next edition of Highlights.

- A zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo. If two pairs of babies are born for each and every one of the original animals, and then 23 animals are transferred to other zoos, how many animals does the zookeeper have left in total?

- You are all alone in a dark room with a match and matchbox. Nearby you have 3 objects: a candle, an oil lamp and a log of firewood. Which thing do you light first?