Friday, May 30, 2008
Roxanne's Reflection
- Why did you choose the concepts you did to create your problem set?
I chose to create problems based on what I had the most trouble with mainly because it would help me fully understand how to solve these certain problems. The first problem in chapter one, which was in the circular functions unit would probably be one of the most challenging problems to solve. Because it involved a lot of work to know how to graph and plot the information given to you. Although the trigonometric identity unit was pretty straight forward, I still had trouble on this unit because there could be so many ways to find the answer, which got me confused at times. I’m sure others had trouble on this unit because in order to get good at solving these questions you need a lot of practice. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 are mainly about logarithms and exponents, which in my opinion was one of the tough units. The only difficulty I had with this unit was the graphing and the word problems because those two main areas have always been my weaknesses in math. The other units included in the project, which are transformations, and the conics unit was pretty straight forward and easy to grasp at times. Though, it both had a lot of graphing, I thought it’d be a good idea to include it the project to help others how to solve them.
- How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?
I found that these problems helped me understand what I needed to look over, especially since exams are coming up. I knew these questions would be difficult to solve but with the help of actually taking the time to look over what I had trouble and such, it made it easier to solve the questions. I thought that actually teaching all of the problems and explaining how to solve them, shows how much I understood each unit. Basically what I’m saying is that, if you know something by heart, you can easily teach it to other people.
- Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you? (Be honest with this. If you got nothing out of this assignment then say that, but be specific about what you didn't like and offer a suggestion to improve it in the future.)
Since we’re being honest here, I’d like to say that when we were first given this assignment, I really didn’t like it. This assignment never got me interested in the beginning because I’m not very good in math compared to other students. Therefore I thought it’d be very difficult and not fun at all. I’m not going to lie, in the beginning of the project I was frustrated and confused on what we had to do because I had no idea where to start. But when I actually took the time to make up questions along with Francis, it wasn’t so bad. It takes hard work to create a really good project and both Francis and I took that time to make it as well as we possibly could.
All in all, I learned a lot from this experience because it taught me how to teach other people how to solve different math problems. I’ve always had difficulties in explaining the steps I took to find my answer but since this project included a lot of explaining and describing, it taught me a lot. This project also helped me look over old notes and problems to prepare myself for the exam. If this project wasn’t given, I probably wouldn’t go too far in my notes to review things I forgot in this semester. Overall, I thought this project was a really good experience to help me; and hopefully my group members, in understanding math much better.
Elven's Reflection
* Why did you choose the concepts you did to create your problem set?
First I would like to state that FRANCIS YOU ARE WRONG. I had my part in adding these problems. Anyways, I think the main idea of this project is to best understand math. By doing that you create your own questions, understand what you're doing and what you're getting into. At first it might have been about choosing the easy and quick questions and get this thing over with. But as you can see we chose questions that we and the class may have problems with. Questions that were NOT long and tedious, but questions that were challenging and something you can learn from.
* How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?
When you learn something, majority of it you would just remember what to do. How to use it. Such as given a formula and plugging in the numbers. It was only until this year when I had began why you had this formula, and where this formula came from. Why you had to use it and what it gave as a result. These questions my group has chosen shown that we have a wide variety of questions we can manage. From circular functions to trigonometry identities. When you understand something, memorizing is useless.
* Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you? (Be honest with this. If you got nothing out of this assignment then say that, but be specific about what you didn't like and offer a suggestion to improve it in the future.)
At first it was thought as get all the easy questions and finish this project ASAP. Instead it turned out to be finding questions that we knew would help us because they were unique, difficult and hard to understand. I was very lucky to be able to participate after missing many dates my group has planned to work on the project. It had seemed like the more effort that was put in, the more understanding the topic became. I enjoyed thinking of a story to go with the math problem. It really didn't seem clear at first. I thoughts were a story could not possibly be put together with a math problem. The time that it took me to think of a story was my only bother. Then it came to be that the stories only made this project more fun. I only wish I was there more for my group to help support them. Distance was a problem for me.
Not only this assignment was educationally valuable to me, but also taught me about responsibility towards my peers. I'm happy to be apart of this group and apart of this assignment. Something I may improve on is perhaps more explaining of the knowledge I had gained throughout this assignment. So definitely, I got something out of this assignment. Cheers.
First I would like to state that FRANCIS YOU ARE WRONG. I had my part in adding these problems. Anyways, I think the main idea of this project is to best understand math. By doing that you create your own questions, understand what you're doing and what you're getting into. At first it might have been about choosing the easy and quick questions and get this thing over with. But as you can see we chose questions that we and the class may have problems with. Questions that were NOT long and tedious, but questions that were challenging and something you can learn from.
* How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?
When you learn something, majority of it you would just remember what to do. How to use it. Such as given a formula and plugging in the numbers. It was only until this year when I had began why you had this formula, and where this formula came from. Why you had to use it and what it gave as a result. These questions my group has chosen shown that we have a wide variety of questions we can manage. From circular functions to trigonometry identities. When you understand something, memorizing is useless.
* Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you? (Be honest with this. If you got nothing out of this assignment then say that, but be specific about what you didn't like and offer a suggestion to improve it in the future.)
At first it was thought as get all the easy questions and finish this project ASAP. Instead it turned out to be finding questions that we knew would help us because they were unique, difficult and hard to understand. I was very lucky to be able to participate after missing many dates my group has planned to work on the project. It had seemed like the more effort that was put in, the more understanding the topic became. I enjoyed thinking of a story to go with the math problem. It really didn't seem clear at first. I thoughts were a story could not possibly be put together with a math problem. The time that it took me to think of a story was my only bother. Then it came to be that the stories only made this project more fun. I only wish I was there more for my group to help support them. Distance was a problem for me.
Not only this assignment was educationally valuable to me, but also taught me about responsibility towards my peers. I'm happy to be apart of this group and apart of this assignment. Something I may improve on is perhaps more explaining of the knowledge I had gained throughout this assignment. So definitely, I got something out of this assignment. Cheers.
Francis' Reflection
• Why did you choose the concepts you did to create your problem set?
Although all the questions were agreed on by Roxanne and myself, my main concern was the circular functions question, the exponential question and the trigonometry identities question. The circular functions because in the beginning of the year, I had the most trouble with that unit, and it really had me sweating. The exponential question because there were so many other equations and terms that seemed similar, and I had no idea which is important for the job at hand. The trigonometry identities question because solving them seemed to be hit and miss, one day I would totally grasp the concept and know what identities to use, and other days would be a total miss, where I would spend quite a bit of time staring at one question figuring out what identity would be most efficient.
• How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?
When I learn something, I usually try to memorize it, but I realized that by doing so, it wasn't good enough. I then understood that you have to understand it and by truly understanding it you can create it. It's a great feeling to know that we pretty much created questions from every single unit, it makes me feel as if I understand pre-calculus entirely, but then again, you can never entirely know everything. These problems show a good overview of my mathematical understanding by having a large range of different pre-calculus units that were once cloudy but are now clear.
• Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you? (Be honest with this. If you got nothing out of this assignment then say that, but be specific about what you didn't like and offer a suggestion to improve it in the future.)
I was quite glad when I realized how successful this assignment was after we were finished, because I went into this stressing and asking myself 'How's this going to get done in time?' and 'How's this really going to help me learn?' but now that it's done I can look back and tell myself just how easy it was to flip back a few pages and look over old notes and re-read, re-write and re-create (re-everything for that matter) a once unclear unit. Although not every unit was all that easy to remember alone, but with the help of friends we would all finally remember because friends can be a great resource. I also finally noticed what I have learned, not only in pre-calculus, but I learned quite a bit about teamwork as well. When going through each lesson slowly, it doesn't seem like I've learned a lot, but once I looked back at it all at once, I saw how much I actually learned, it was quite a bit. This whole project seemed like one big review to help us in our exam, it was greatly needed. What I'm getting at is that I not only learned a lot about the math aspect, I learned good life values. This was definitely educationally valuable to me as a student, I just hope I won't forget anything, such as logarithms are exponents. Only time will tell. Thank you. The end.
Although all the questions were agreed on by Roxanne and myself, my main concern was the circular functions question, the exponential question and the trigonometry identities question. The circular functions because in the beginning of the year, I had the most trouble with that unit, and it really had me sweating. The exponential question because there were so many other equations and terms that seemed similar, and I had no idea which is important for the job at hand. The trigonometry identities question because solving them seemed to be hit and miss, one day I would totally grasp the concept and know what identities to use, and other days would be a total miss, where I would spend quite a bit of time staring at one question figuring out what identity would be most efficient.
• How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?
When I learn something, I usually try to memorize it, but I realized that by doing so, it wasn't good enough. I then understood that you have to understand it and by truly understanding it you can create it. It's a great feeling to know that we pretty much created questions from every single unit, it makes me feel as if I understand pre-calculus entirely, but then again, you can never entirely know everything. These problems show a good overview of my mathematical understanding by having a large range of different pre-calculus units that were once cloudy but are now clear.
• Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you? (Be honest with this. If you got nothing out of this assignment then say that, but be specific about what you didn't like and offer a suggestion to improve it in the future.)
I was quite glad when I realized how successful this assignment was after we were finished, because I went into this stressing and asking myself 'How's this going to get done in time?' and 'How's this really going to help me learn?' but now that it's done I can look back and tell myself just how easy it was to flip back a few pages and look over old notes and re-read, re-write and re-create (re-everything for that matter) a once unclear unit. Although not every unit was all that easy to remember alone, but with the help of friends we would all finally remember because friends can be a great resource. I also finally noticed what I have learned, not only in pre-calculus, but I learned quite a bit about teamwork as well. When going through each lesson slowly, it doesn't seem like I've learned a lot, but once I looked back at it all at once, I saw how much I actually learned, it was quite a bit. This whole project seemed like one big review to help us in our exam, it was greatly needed. What I'm getting at is that I not only learned a lot about the math aspect, I learned good life values. This was definitely educationally valuable to me as a student, I just hope I won't forget anything, such as logarithms are exponents. Only time will tell. Thank you. The end.
Conclusion
This is where the story for Captain Jabbamathee ends, although we only witnessed a few of his adventures throughout this blog, we have only scratched the surface. It's safe to say that his story isn't completely done, because there's a Captain Jabbamathee in all of us. From opening our mind to pre-calculus, and having passion for it, we can then pass this passion and knowledge for pre-calculus on to others in need. Our whole project is what this signifies, a creation of many questions that show our passion and knowledge for pre-calculus, and I'm sure it will help others to understand pre-calculus in such a way that it helped us by producing it. A well said quote by Mr. Kuropatwa sums this up quite nicely: "Go out there and commit random acts of kindness." Thank you. The end.
Chapter 6
"I'm sorry Eleven, you've brought this on yourself."
"But Mr. K! I can do this, I'm still willing to learn!"
"Well, you've had your chances, and you've taken none. It's most unlikely you would pass. You MUST come to class, you cannot afford to miss any more."
"... I'll be there. You'll see."
"No. What I want to see is your effort," Mr. K said, "Here, take this."
"What is it?" Elven asked.
"If you can tell me what the shape this is, then you are welcome to join my class."
"Well that's easy! It's not a shape! It's a bunch of numbers and letters!"
"You see Eleven, you haven't been paying attention one bit."
"Aww man!" exclaimed Eleven, "No problem. It'll be done by next morning!"
Eleven then rushed home and put on his thinking cap.
"Eureka! It's an ellipse! IN YOUR FACE MR. K!"
Eleven dances in circles and has his little moment of celebration until the paper flips around. Eleven slowly reads ...
"P.S."
.."I already don't like the sound of that." thought Eleven.
"I'm sure you have found what the shape is. Now the real question is have you found:
-The standard form
-The major axis
-The minor axis
-The center
-The foci
-The vertices
Are you able to graph this shape?"
"CURSE YOU MR. K! CURSE YOUUU! What the heck is a 'foci'!? "
Eleven dug his nails in his head in fustration, realizing Mr. K was undefeatable. Then the moment of truth came! He knew exactly what to do. He quickly dialed the digits of Captain Jabbamathee.
"Captain Jabbamathee, please defeat the evil Mr. K!"
"Woah-woah-woah, slow down there son. I do math problems, not super villain fighting."
"Yes! I mean exactly that please -" Eleven was cut off by a knock on his door room. He ran to get it.
"CAPTAIN JABBAMATHEE?! HOW, WHA-" surprised, Eleven quickly shown Captain Jabbamathee the questions without asking questions.
Captain Jabbamathee turned dull, "it's an ellipse ..."
"No! No! Turn the page around!" explained Eleven.
"Ah I see, I was tricked. Not bad, not bad. It's simple, let me show you your steps to your success."
Chapter 5
"Hey Samantha! You hyped for today's party?" Anne yells from across the school hallway.
"Party?" questioned Samantha.
"Yeah, today at your best friends house?" Anne replies.
"Oh, I remember. It must have slipped my mind, but yeah, I'll be there."
"Great! It's in about an hour, since school's out now." Anne says as she walks away.
Samantha walks into her room, throws her binder onto the bed and realizes she has some homework do. She gazes at the clock and sees that she has 45 minutes to go, not enough time to change clothes and do homework, unless she can super multi-task. She quickly rushes to her binder looking for something her friend mentioned earlier. A number, a number that would be used to contact Captain Jabbamathee. Within 5 minutes Captain Jabbamathee was racing through this problem pen on paper, showing all solutions to Samantha's transformation assignment. Samantha knew she would make it in time. Thanks Captain Jabbamthee! Here were his steps to success.
"Party?" questioned Samantha.
"Yeah, today at your best friends house?" Anne replies.
"Oh, I remember. It must have slipped my mind, but yeah, I'll be there."
"Great! It's in about an hour, since school's out now." Anne says as she walks away.
Samantha walks into her room, throws her binder onto the bed and realizes she has some homework do. She gazes at the clock and sees that she has 45 minutes to go, not enough time to change clothes and do homework, unless she can super multi-task. She quickly rushes to her binder looking for something her friend mentioned earlier. A number, a number that would be used to contact Captain Jabbamathee. Within 5 minutes Captain Jabbamathee was racing through this problem pen on paper, showing all solutions to Samantha's transformation assignment. Samantha knew she would make it in time. Thanks Captain Jabbamthee! Here were his steps to success.
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