It’s Friday and you know what that means. It’s time for …
Your DREAM Adventure
Cameron and his class are back and writing again on the class blog. I thought this was an interest provocation and some of the replies came in just before the March Break. Perhaps this is what they had planned for this past week?
I’ve got to go with Isla 🙂 though. You can’t beat a good beach and if it takes going to Australia or specifically Hyams Beach in Shoalhave, I’m all over it. If I could only get my wife to fly again.
In the meantime, Google Maps with Streetview shows what I’m missing.
It looks pretty sweet.
Math Links for Week Ending Mar. 14th, 2014
Well, we missed Pi Day by one day this year. But it’s still kind of relevant since I’m writing this on Thursday which actually is Pi Day.
And, since it’s Spring, it’s appropriate to throw some ducks into the equation.
There are lots of other interesting Pi things in this post and David’s posts are always chocked full of good Mathematics things.
I couldn’t resist asking Copilot the question
“What’s the probability that Pi Day will fall on a Friday?” I was expecting something about the extra day from Leap Year.
Pi Day, celebrated on March 14th (or 3.14), is a delightful occasion for math enthusiasts. Let’s explore the probability that Pi Day falls on a Friday.
To estimate this, we can consider the days of the week and their probabilities:
- Probability that today is Friday (P(F)): Since there are 7 days in a week, the chance of any specific day being Friday is 1/7.
- Probability that today is Saturday (P(S)): Similarly, the chance of today being Saturday is also 1/7.
- Probability that it is the weekend (P(W)): The weekend consists of both Saturday and Sunday, so the probability of it being the weekend is 2/7.
Now, let’s calculate the probability that it’s either Friday or the weekend:
[ P(\text{Friday or Weekend}) = P(F) + P(W) = \frac{1}{7} + \frac{2}{7} = \frac{3}{7} ]
Since Pi Day always falls on March 14th, we need to find out which day of the week March 14th corresponds to in a given year. The doomsday concept helps us with this. Each year has a specific doomsday (a day of the week that repeats throughout the year). For example, in 2021, the doomsday was Sunday.
In 2021, Pi Day (March 14th) indeed fell on a Sunday1. Therefore, the probability that Pi Day falls on a Friday is zero for that year.
However, in other years, the probability may vary depending on the doomsday. You can explore the doomsdays for different years and have fun calculating the probabilities! 🥧📅
Why not celebrate Monday since the class missed Pi Day? What did they do on the 14th that was Pi relevant? I’ll bet that our place isn’t the only place ordered pizza.
LITL: “Magic” Ratio for Relationships
It’s not Pi but it’s interesting Mathematics all the same. Laura’s latest Learning in the Loo was inspired by the Gottman Research on successful relationships.
From Laura’s post:
“The difference between happy and unhappy couples is the balance between positive and negative interactions during conflict. There is a very specific ratio that makes love last.
That “magic ratio” is 5 to 1. This means that for every negative interaction during conflict, a stable and happy marriage has five (or more) positive interactions.”
That got me thinking a great deal since I don’t keep score. I know that I’m happy with whatever ratio we have going.
Laura took an interesting twist on the concept and the Learning in the Loo newsletter talks about building relationships with students. She gives a listing of some of the types of interactions that might happen in your classroom.
Even the awareness of the things that she identifies would be helpful. It might even be an interesting exercise to have students keep score and hand in their results to see how the lessons and student relationships went from their perspective.
It seems appropriate to include one of Sylvia Duckworth’s efforts here.
The loneliest time
I’d have to file this under “I had no idea”. I make no apologies because I’ve always been in schools in Ontario and the language for anywhere I’d been was English. Even when I attended meetings at French Immersion schools, the language of the meeting was English.
Diane sets the stage by sharing her experiences in a school where the language wasn’t English and she wasn’t knowledgeable of the language. Those meetings generated the “loneliest time” that she describes. I could picture myself in that setting and being equally as lonely.
She closes with an acknowledgement of students and inclusion which I thought tagged on nicely to Laura’s post.
please accept this blog entry as a little love letter to all of those educators who make sure every student is included and heard
It’s a great read and an equally great reminder that there are things that teachers can and should be doing.
Little Cyber Skills Bonfires Across Canada
Most Saturday afternoons, I have a “Zoom Beer” with a good friend, a retired university professor of Computer Science. Just this past weekend, we were talking about first year university courses and how they’ve been rewritten in his old school to include more development of Cyber Skills with incoming students.
It probably comes as no surprise that so many of them have mastered Facebook and TikTok and not much more.
In terms of the courses, the professors leading the charge are constantly working and researching to try and stay abreast with what’s happening. It isn’t easy.
Tim’s on a mission to help spread the word about the concept to schools across Canada. He even participated in a professional development day in Nova Scotia.
I do wonder (and worry) about what’s happening here in Ontario and those who are leading our students into the future. Do we have adequate (or any) ongoing learning for our teachers to stay on top of this stuff?
Here’s a start.
Please try and find some time to click through and read these terrific posts. Once again, there’s a great deal of interesting and relevant content.
This is a regular Friday morning post around here. You can check out all the previous posts here.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.