Session+1

= Session 1 - Motivation and Project ideas =

Aim
The aim of this session is to look at how the idea of Maths projects can be introduced to students to increase motivation, open their eyes to the possibilities and how to generate ideas.

Session Outline

 * // ’Motivational Videos’ //** – Looking at some ‘TED talks’ where mathematicians explain their investigations.

Nick Marks on 'The Happy Planet Index'
media type="custom" key="6958279" @http://www.happyplanetindex.org/

media type="custom" key="6958293"
@http://www.gapminder.org/

David McCandless and 'Information is Beautiful'
media type="custom" key="6961111" @http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

Chris Jordan and 'Running the Numbers'
media type="custom" key="6961141" Running the numbers

media type="custom" key="6961245" @http://mathematicsofwar.com/

[[image:Kaggle.gif link="@http://kaggle.com/"]]

 * // ‘Choosing a theme’ //** – Trying an exercise as teachers, designed to help students think about things they are interested in and focus this down to mathematical ideas.


 * // ‘Brainstorming for ideas’ //** – Following the previous exercise, the aim here is to explore the wide variety of available ideas for Maths Studies project

What are the 'Sophisticated processes'?



The Limits of Human Endurance
Modelling with exponential functions amongst other things. The focus of this project idea is the way in which world records have changed for given athlectic events over the last 100 years, or as far as data allows. Is there a limit to how fast a person can run 100m? Is it different for men and for women?

Whats in the News
At first thought, a newspaper analysis sounds a bit dull and like it was made up to create a Maths activity! That is until you do it! There are plenty of fascinating things to consider in the make up ofa newspaper, things that are considered daily by the people that produce them. What makes a good headline? How many photos should I have on a given page? How big should the photos be? How long should the article be? What should the articles on the front page be about? Who should write them? The answers to all these questions can tell us a lot about different newspapers and offer a rich Mathematical investigation in the process

Number One Singles
The Music industry is a popular topic of conversation, particular amongst teenagers or a steenagers argue with their parents that things aren't what they used to be? Well, why not find out what has changed about the number one single since the charts began! Are songs longer or shorter? How long do they stay at number one? Who sings them? What type of song gets to number one?

Temperature fluctuations
'I wish I was at home in Madrid', says one one of my students, the weather is so much nicer there! Well is it? What are the minimum and maximum temperatures? Is there a pattern to how they vary through the year? Can this be modelled?

Fat Calories
Navigate your way through fast food heaven and decide which is the worst offender on the fast food market! Using about the nutritional content of different fast food meals this project involves a statistical analysis to compare different fast food restaurants.

3 Points
Kicking a penalty or converting a try in a Rugby game can be the difference beyween winning and loosing! So what does the perfect kick look like? Can the path of a rugby ball on this journey be modelled to help answer that question? What difference does it make if the player is in fron tof the posts or not?

The Olympics - Fair or Fraud?
Are the Olympic Games really a fair contest? How could we reorder the medal table to take account of factors like GDP of the country, population and so on? Using information from Olympic records, this project could use Mathematics to produce a whole range of diffferent tables and may a different set of winners!

First Serve
Whats in a serve? How important is the first serve speed of a tennis player in definign there rank and their success. This project uses data from recent competitions that helps to answer those questions.

The Political Compass
What are your political persuasions, or those of those around you? This project looks at designing a questionnaire to help people answer that question. By attaching numbers to the results of the questions, a score is generated and a position on the political compass given!