>Year (t) 1960 1970 1980 1988 1993
>Garbage (g) in pounds per person per day 2.7 3.2 3.6 4.0 4.1
>
>...Do your students know we (US citizens) have a real problem
>with garbage? Do they know...
Very nice problem direction, Ed. With just 5 pairs of real values, you've
done a great job of bringing real-world relevance to the exercise. And for
the occupationally inclined, it would be a very small step to include real
people and jobs who must concern themselves with such questions.
I find that many textbook problems don't take the steps you've described to
link up the data with a very real reason for having the data to begin with.
Rather we present students with some data (to them it comes from "out of
the blue") and ask them to find slope, average, trends, solutions, etc,
with no link to a context of why any of those mathematical perspectives are
needful. So we get abstract problems like this (I got this from a popular Alg 2 text):
Jane has 20 nickels, dimes, and quarters whose value
totals $3.25. If there are twice as many quarters
as dimes, how many of each kind of coin did she have?
This may be good "exercise" for strong students, but the average students
are left wondering: "Huh? If Jane can see that there are twice as many
quarters as dimes, than she can surely count how many of each there are!"
John Chamberlain | C - O - R - D
Senior Associate | 601 Lake Air Dr
- - - - - - - - - - - | Waco, TX 76710
800-972-2766, Ext 221 | Fax 254-772-8972
chamber@cord.org | http://www.cord.org
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