Categories
Geometric Measurement and Dimension Pythagorean Theorem Right Triangles Similarity, Right Triangles and Trigonometry

All Ramps Are 45 Degrees + Pythagorean Theorem

Two interesting mistakes here. The first has to do with the Pythagorean Theorem, the other (more interesting) has to do with the angle of inclination.

45degrees

 

I wonder what she’s looking at that the angle always stays the same. My guess, based on her first triangle, is that she thinks that the diagonal of a rectangle always bisects the right angle.

This might make for a nice bit of feedback for her. I could ask, “Is it possible to draw a rectangle whose diagonals don’t always make 45 degree angles? The answer matters for what you wrote here.” Or maybe the feedback I supply here should be a counterexample — a very long rectangle whose diagonals clearly don’t make 45 degrees? What’s my goal in this feedback, anyway?

I suppose my only goal is to have her know that the diagonals don’t bisect the angles, and to believe this in a way that she’ll remember and be able to reproduce on a new problem. So I want to equip her with the means to prove it to herself.

Given all this, I think I should probably be more direct in my feedback about the fact of non-bisection. I should leave the proof up to her, though. “Try to draw a rectangle whose diagonals don’t make 45 degree angles.”

One last worry. What if I’m wrong about my diagnosis of her thinking? What if she is seeing 45 degrees in these ramps in some other way? Maybe the best thing is to check in with her verbally before giving her any written feedback, to confirm that my theory is correct?

Update (4/23/15): Here’s the feedback and her post-feedback work. In conversation, I was able to confirm that my “every rectangle’s diagonals bisect a right angle” theory was right.

feedback

Categories
Area exponents Fractions Geometric Measurement and Dimension

5 and 1/2 x 2 and 1/4 = 7 and 3/4

IMG_3658

I find this fascinating. This student clearly knows how that multiplying the base and the height of a rectangle gives you its area. She even knows how to multiply fraction. But when it comes to part (d), she adds the numbers instead of multiplying them.

In earlier writing I hypothesized that, when put in unfamiliar situations, students often default to an “easier” operation. This idea now seems problematic to me. What, after all, is an “easier” operation any way? And what exactly would trigger this default to some other operation? And how do we explain why competent adults — like me — make similar mistakes on my own work?

It now seems more likely to me that we associate certain pairs of numbers with certain operations. Think about the numbers 100 and 1/2. I’d suggest that most people have an association of “50” with 100 and 1/2. After all, how often have you been asked to add 100 and 1/2 together? How often have you been asked to subtract 1/2 from 100? In contrast, how often have you been asked to find 1/2 of 100?

How often have you been asked to multiply 5 1/2 and 2 1/4 together? My guess is that you — and the student above — have been asked to add these sorts of mixed numbers more often than multiply them.

The idea here is that the pairs of numbers themselves come with associations.

There’s a hard version of this claim that I don’t mean to make. I don’t mean to say that, no matter the context, you’d expect a student to add 5 1/2 and 2 1/4 together. I think a division problem with mixed numbers is unlikely to trigger associations with addition. Maybe I’m moving towards a two-part model? The sorts of mistakes we make with numbers depends both on the associations with the operation and also associations with the numbers? And things get really bad when these two associations point in the same direction?

This theory feels very testable, but at the moment I’m having a hard time articulating a possible test of it. But we should be able to mess with people’s associations with numbers and see if that changes the sorts of mistakes that they make. Ideas?

Categories
Area Congruence Feedback Geometric Measurement and Dimension Geometry

“What feedback would you give?”, continued

In a previous post, lots of commenters said that they didn’t feel that you could give helpful, written feedback because there wasn’t enough evidence of student thinking on the quiz. Given that complaint, it might be interested to see how those same teachers would give written feedback on a quiz that gives significantly more evidence of how a student is thinking.

Here’s another quiz: what sort of written feedback would you give? (The checkmarks are from the student, who was provided with an answer key and checked her own work, ala this.)

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IMG_3530

 

As before, imagine that you don’t have to write a grade on this paper. Some things I’m wondering about:

  • Would you give comments on every solution, or only some of them?
  • Will you ask kids to “explain why you said _______”? When is it helpful to ask for an explanation? When isn’t it?
  • Will you give your kids specific next steps, or will you mostly point out the good and the bad of their work?
  • Will you throw up your hands and say “You really need to have a conversation with the kid!” for this sort of quiz also?

 

Categories
Area Circles Geometric Measurement and Dimension High School: Geometry Similarity, Right Triangles and Trigonometry

Area of a Circle, Minus a Square

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Do you see the mistake? How would you help this student?

Categories
Distance Between Points Geometric Measurement and Dimension

The distance between (1,1) and (4,5) is 7

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Categories
Decimals Geometric Measurement and Dimension Surface Area and Volume

A decimal mistake

dylan image

Decimals are hard.

What would we even want the student to do here if he’s working in decimal? Like, how do standard multiplication algorithms handle something like a repeating digit?

That’s what I’m getting out of this mistake right now: the deviousness of decimal representation, and the way it can obscure numerical properties.

How about you? What do you make of all this?

 

Categories
Geometric Measurement and Dimension High School: Statistics and Probability Interpreting Categorical and Quantitative Data

Cylinder Scatterplot

greg1

 

1. This is a really cool question.

2. Gregory Taylor says he doesn’t know what the kid was thinking. Thoughts?

Categories
Geometric Measurement and Dimension Similarity, Right Triangles and Trigonometry

People Often Use Additive Instead of Multiplicative Reasoning

scaling

Categories
Area Geometric Measurement and Dimension Pythagorean Theorem Similarity, Right Triangles and Trigonometry

Base1 times Base2 = Area of Triangle

IMG_3257

 

Lots to notice here, including the formula that the student is using for the area of a triangle.

Categories
Geometric Measurement and Dimension Geometry

Sides and angles

photo (2)

 

Tina asks:

Why do kids have such a hard time distinguishing between sides and angles? They are so different in my mind, I don’t even know how to explain the difference.

Thoughts?