The myth of application permeates educational mathematics. We are informed that mathematics can address difficulties in the actual world. With the exception of a curriculum that requires the teaching of certain mathematics in a predetermined order. Naturally, then, the real world has been contorted to make way for the mathematics that must be studied. How often does an automobile go at a constant speed, displaying a straight line on a distance-time graph beginning at the origin in our teaching of distance and time? The pandemic has not thrown up many linear models, or even quadratic models. Learning the maths presented in a distorted and damaged context is worse than unhelpful. Either the student has sufficient knowledge of how the real world functions to realize that the version of math lessons that they are taught is merely not real, and thus the math is not a model of it, or, worse, they base their entire understanding of the world on the flawed assumption that cars actually move at a constant speed from rest. Therefore, students of school mathematics lack the tools (they were not allowed to play with functions; instead, they had to learn linear, then quadratic, and never quite reached exponential), and they would therefore expect reality to fit the mold when stuff actually matters, as it really does in this pandemic.
In order to assert that mathematics holds some practical significance and relevance beyond the classroom (which it has this year, more than ever), we must involve our students in the process of making sense of the world. examining real-time data and experimenting with mathematical formulas to determine its potential fit. Drawing an exponential function with graphing software is no more difficult than drawing a linear function, and learners will be curious about the results if the data driving the function is something they are invested in. It is difficult and multifaceted to build linkages between a felt and lived world and mathematical things helpful for portraying it, but it is achievable if we let the environment guide the arithmetic instead of the other way around.
We would link our remaining ultrasonic distance sensors to real-time graphing software. The students would make distinct distance time (and eventually velocity/time) graphs by walking in a straight line both towards and away from the sensor. The friendship is formed and truly felt in this way. It’s a pretty beautiful thing to see the motion to make a sine curve as a distance/time graph. Students also had to use short-term data from our Pizza project to create models for a pizza’s cooling process.A model’s implications can only be discussed in a setting that reflects how the real world functions.The Fibonnaci sequence was my choice for an intriguing variation. 11×12 is neither practical nor fascinating. Students need to see what they learn as examples from a variety of helpful tools that, when critically applied, can provide us ways of perceiving what happens in that world in a more manageable way in order to make sense of a world that acts like the one they actually live in. There are many, many more types of functions; examples include linear and quadratic. Times tables include Fibonacci, Square, Triangle, and other power correlations between numbers. As a result, we approach variation and relationships with flexibility, openness, and constant criticalness.
