Barbie figures and ratio

Learning Intention: Students will understand how to calculate and simplify ratios using body measurements as an example.

Success Criteria: Students will be able to correctly estimate the ratio of various body proportions, using average class data.

Do you think that “Barbie” dolls portray a realistic image of a human figure? What about “Bratz” dolls and Manga figures? What is it about these figures that make them so appealing to children? We are going to investigate the proportions of “Barbie” dolls and other figures to compare their ratios with the average year 7 student from Hawkesdale college. We now have the data that gives us some average measurements of height, head circumference, arm and leg length and chest, waist and hip measurements of the average student in our class.

  • As you can see from the figure above, “Barbie” has a head to height ratio of 4 to 28cm or 1:7.
  • Her leg to height ratio is 14cm to 28cm or 1:2.
  • Her neck to height ratio is 2cm to 28cm or 1:14.
  • Her head circumference is larger than her waist circumference.
  • Her foot length to leg length is 2cm to 14cm, so, 1:7.

Calculate the same ratios for the average Year 7 student, using our data. What can you conclude?

Bill Genereux has written a terrific post about the proportions of superheroes, from a book that teaches people how to draw comic book heroes. Malyn Mawby has also written a great post about using Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” to learn about ratio and proportion.

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Our survey results

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Learning Intention: Students will understand the meaning of mean, median, mode and range. They will understand how to calculate an average from given data and be able to work out the range of that data. They will then use the data to explore and compare ratios.

Success Criteria: Students will correctly calculate the average and range of the given data and use the data to make some comparisons of ratio.

Statistical values, such as mean, median, mode and range, help us to determine trends in the data. They are used in a variety of ways in business, education and government organisations. For example,  a company might want to find out about which customers spend the most money in their shops, so they can target their advertising better. Governments might need to find out about the age groups in their community, so they can distribute funding to health care, aged care, kindergartens, schools, universities, hospitals and other services.

  • The mean (or average) of a set of numbers is calculated by adding all the numbers together and dividing by the number of values. It will always be somewhere between the smallest and largest value. What is the average height of students in Year 7 at Hawkesdale P12 College? Is there a height difference between males and females?
  • The mode is the most frequently represented score. A shoe shop will need to order more pairs of popular sizes – 8, 9 and 10 – than smaller or larger sizes, for example.
  • The median is the middle value – halfway between the smallest and largest value.
  • The range is calculated by subtracting the smallest number from the largest number. What is the range of arm lengths in Year 7?

 

Fractions interactives from NLVM

Fractions as we know them today weren’t used in Europe until the 17th century. However, Egyptians have been using fractions since at least 1800BC, although they never wrote fractions with a numerator greater than one. These are called unit fractions. Fractions with a numerator greater than one were expressed as the sum of unit fractions. Find out more at the History of fractions and Egyptian fractions.

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has a range of interactive applets that you can access to learn about fractions:

Try at least three of these interactives and write a comment below about what you have learned.

Adding and subtracting fractions

Image is a screenshot from the Cool Math 4 Kids site.

When adding or subtracting fractions the first thing you need to do is make sure that the denominators (bottom numbers) are the same. If all the denominators are the same you can simply add or subtract the numerators (top numbers) and then simplify the answer if required. If the denominators are different, you need to find a common multiple and convert both fractions, so that the denominators are the same. Activities 4 and 5 below show how this is done:

1. Adding Fractions from Cool Maths 4 Kids.

2. Three simple steps to adding fractions from “Maths is Fun”.

3. BBC Bitesize – fractions activities – Choose the fractions activities from BBC Bitesize (Equivalent fractions and ordering and comparing fractions).

4. Adding fractions with different denominators from “Maths Playground”.

5. Adding fractions with different denominators from YouTube – Maths Made Simple Series.

Equivalent fractions

Learning intention: Students will be able to identify and name equivalent fractions (halves, thirds, quarters, fifths and sixths) and describe how they are calculated.

Success criteria: Students will successfully identify equivalent fractions on their fraction walls and name equivalent fractions on a number line.

Maths Playground – Visual fractions (the visuals are good, but the program doesn’t always allow the right answer?)

Maths is Fun – Equivalent fractions

Maths Games – Matching equivalent fractions

Square numbers, square roots and Multo

Problem solving strategy board from Maths300

Over the last few weeks you have learned about the following concepts:

  • numbers less than zero, called negative numbers
  • factors
  • multiples
  • prime numbers (only two factors, one and themselves)
  • Composite numbers (any number with more than two factors)
  • Square numbers (numbers with an odd number of factors)
  • Square root (the symbol over a number that indicates you calculate the number that is multiplied by itself to get the original number)

We played the game “Multo” which helped to consolidate your knowledge of number facts and made you think about which numbers were most frequently called (common multiples and not prime numbers greater than 7).

Remember you can access Mathsmate Skill Builder sheets at their website if you need help with your Mathsmate. You should also be accessing Mathletics to complete three activities each week. I have found that the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browsers seem to access Mathletics from home better than Windows Explorer.

Multiples, Factors and Primes

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Learning Intention: Students will understand what Multiples, Factors and Prime Numbers are and why they are useful.

Success criteria: Students will be able to recognise multiples, factors and prime numbers and calculate the Highest Common Factors (HCF) and Lowest Common Multiples (LCM) of given numbers.

Substitution in Algebra


Learning Intention: Students will understand that substitution into formulae is a valuable mathematical process that is useful in many real-life situations.

Success Criteria: Students will work through a series of substitution exercises and identify useful formula for converting units of measurement (eg. Celcius to Fahrenheit; ounces to grams; miles to kilometers; calories to kilojoules). Students will use the formulae to calculate the height of a person knowing the length of their femur bone.

Forensic scientists are responsible for piecing together information about crimes, such as identifying victims and perpetrators from DNA evidence, fingerprints and bones. One formula that scientists use is to calculate the height of a person(h) from the length of their thigh bone – called a femur(f) in centimeters. The formula is as follows:

height = 69.09 + 2.24 x femur OR h = 69.09 + 2.24f

Walking along the beach, your dog retrieves a human thigh bone! It is 45cm long. How tall was the person this bone belonged to?

A fellow blogger, Malyn Mawby, has written a great post about how she used the Vitruvian Man to teach a lesson incorporating ratio, percentages and algebra. Do your body parts match the ratio of the Vitruvian Man?

Use the Internet to research at least five of the following and give an example of each.

1. Calories to kilojoules
2. Miles to kilometers
3. Celcius to Fahrenheit
4. Ounces (oz) to grams
5. Pounds (lbs) to kilograms
6. Acres to hectares
7. Inches to centimeters
8. Australian dollars to British sterling
9. Feet to metres
10. Time in Hawkesdale to time in Greenwich, UK.

Hey teacher – there’s letters in my Maths!


Learning Intention: Students should understand that pronumerals represent variable numbers in expressions and equations. They will also understand what “like” and “unlike” terms are and some of the simple algebraic conventions that mathematicians use.

Success Criteria: You will complete a series of tasks, including identifying like and unlike terms and simplifying expressions.

This week we will continue our introduction to algebra. You have already done lots of algebra without knowing it – recognizing and continuing number patterns, finding the missing angle or number and substituting values into equations.

A = the number of letters in your first name (Britt = 5)
B = the number of letters in your family name (Gow = 3)

What does A + B = ? (Britt Gow = 8) See if you can find someone in the class with the same answer as you. Did you both have the same equation?

Now see if you can make A and B equal your age. I am 46 years old, so
8A + 2B = 46. Are there other ways you can make the answer equal your age?

How could you make A and B equal today’s date? Can you make A and B equal your birthdate (day of the month you were born).

Some more algebra for beginners:

Shape times Shape is an activity where you discover which shapes represent which numbers, using a series of multiplication problems.

BBC Bitesize has an introduction to algebra using formulae.

Maths is Fun also has an introduction to algebra which includes a brief explanation with some examples.

Students then need to be able to recognise like and unlike terms. There are some more practise questions at MCA Online: Like and Unlike TermsAlgebra for Children is another site that may assist you to work with like and unlike terms.

Later in the term we will access some more difficult problems:

As each of you have netbooks to use at school and at home, you may like to access the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives site, which has a great range of interactive tasks for year 6 to 8 Algebra. I like the “Coin Problem”;“Factor Tree” and “Function Machine”.

This virtual manipulative from the National  Library, Algebra Scales, helps you to solve equations using a balance scales. This one is a little more difficult, Algebra Scales using negative numbers. Remember to do the same thing to both sides of the equation.