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IntMath Newsletter: Reflecting graphs, data and efficient lawn mowing

By Murray Bourne, 25 Jul 2011

26 July 2011

In this Newsletter:

1. How to reflect a graph through the x-axis, y-axis or Origin?
2. Visual.ly data visualization
3. Resource: Thinkfinity
4. Friday math movie: Time to re-design medical data
5. Mow your lawn efficiently - use math!
6. Puzzles
7. Final thought: Greatness

Please note: During the northern summer break (while most math students and educators are at the beach, summer camp, working or mowing lawns), the IntMath Newsletter is published once per month.

1. How to reflect a graph through the x-axis, y-axis or Origin?

Suitable for: Everyone

What does reflecting a graph through the x-axis mean?

A reader asks how to graph f(-x) and -f(x), and what does it mean?

How to reflect a graph through the x-axis, y-axis or Origin?

2. Visual.ly data visualization

Suitable for: Everyone

visual.ly Data visualization

Visual.ly is a neat new data visualization tool. Worth a look, but it's still new. This could be a great tool for class projects in math.

Visual.ly data visualization

3. Resource: Thinkfinity

It appears this one has disappeared.

The resources I've been sharing in this space over the last several IntMath Newsletters was based on "Ten great sites with free teacher resources" from e-School News.

4. Friday math movie: Time to re-design medical data

Suitable for: Everyone

visual medical data

Here are 2 videos that talk about how personalized patient data in visual form has immense implications for human health.

Friday math movie: Time to re-design medical data

5. Mow your lawn efficiently - use math!

Suitable for: Everyone

Optimize lawn mowing with math!

This is a fun article from Australia's The Age newspaper. It describes how you can use geometry to optimize your effort.

A Victa-ry for mathematics [no longer available]

6. Puzzles

Last mail I posed the question "Can you use five 5s to make 100?".

Here's one possible solution:

(5 - 5/5) × 5 × 5 = 100

Did you get any other answers?

Here's a new one:

"My husband's age," remarked a lady the other day, "is represented by the figures of my own age reversed. He is my senior, and the difference between our ages is one-eleventh of their sum." How old are they?

7. Final Thought: Greatness

The world's best discoveries were made along a road littered with wrong turns, insufficient knowledge and many outright failures. Don't worry if you feel like that in math class sometimes!

If at first you don't succeed, you're like everyone else who went on to greatness. [Patrick Combs]

Until next time, enjoy whatever you learn.

See the 8 Comments below.

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HTML: You can use simple tags like <b>, <a href="...">, etc.

To enter math, you can can either:

  1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
    `a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)`
    (See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
  2. Use simple LaTeX in the following format. Surround your math with \( and \).
    \( \int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}} \)
    (This is standard simple LaTeX.)

NOTE: You can mix both types of math entry in your comment.

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