Taxes

Laura found this example of math on the internet:

 Tax Article

 

This article talks about the tax going up 66 % in Illinois. It was 3 % then went to 5 %. So it went up 2 %. 2 % divided by 3 % is 67 % but they didn’t round up they rounded down.

               

One of the top news stories on the internet this week was about state income taxes going up 66% in Illinois. I decided to read this article because it had math in it, and I thought it might be a good article for the blog. The lawmakers in Illinois voted to increase the income tax from 3% to 5%. It went up 2%; a 2% increase on a tax of 3% is approximately 67% if you divide 2% by 3%. But in the article they rounded down when they should have rounded up.

.02/.03 = 0.666667 = 67%

Real Life can be Eye Opening

Marcela wrote:

"I chose this because when i was still in Colombia the earthquake was the new of the month.

Because of the devastation of the earthquake they have now a cholera epidemic. After all the dead they have again many interesting numbers.  first they give us a number. in the beginning there was 1,978 people hospitalize and the number increase to 1,6742 .  second the statistic for people getting sick increase 41% and the dead toll has increase 31%."

Cholera in Haiti

Math at the Movies

Hannah went to the movies and found the following real-life application:

The first picture is prices for tickets, the second is for popcorn prices.
    
If a people buy tickets for a 3-D matinee showing of a movie they pay $12.50 each. If people buy b large bags of popcorn they pay $8.00 for each. An equation for if some people got popcorn and a 3-D matinee would be 12.50a+ 8b= total price. 


I forgot to ask her what movie she saw!

Solving Systems of Equations

Here is a lesson plan I created on solving systems of equations. It uses basketball stats and folk tales!

Solving Systems of Equations

Tessellations

Why does Miles get to do all the blogging?  My name is Trixie and I am Miles' little sister.  I love to go for walks and chase bunny rabbits and butterflies.

All of this talk about M.C. Escher inspired me to attempt a complex tessellation piece, so for your viewing pleasure, I present:

Bunny Rabbits 2010

What do you think?

M.C. Escher

I don't love writing papers, so when I found out that I would have to write a ten page paper for my history of math class I was less than excited. The only way to make the project more palatable was to write about something that I enjoy and want to learn even more about, which is why I chose the visual artist M.C. Escher.  I was aware of his use of tessellations to create amazing images, but that was the extent of my knowledge.

While writing my paper I learned that M.C. Escher's work was a lot more complex than I had ever imagined.  He used concepts such as infinity, the mobius strip, the Penrose Triangle, impossible objects, hyperbolic geometry and inversion of a circle to create pieces of art that were so much more complex than his initial division of a plane works.  It gave me a knew appreciation for his visual art, but I still don't like writing papers!

You can read my paper here:
M.C. Escher

Poetic Math

Today I learned about poetry.

What does that have to do with math? Well, let's see!

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that consists of three phrases. The first phrase contains five syllables, the second phrase contains seven syllables, and the third contains five syllables. That makes a total of seventeen syllables. The phrases do not have to rhyme.


I wrote my first haiku and it goes like this:


My name is Miles.
I like to solve math problems.
I am a good boy.

Not bad if I do say so myself.

Have you ever written a haiku? If so, send it to me and I will post it.