MAFS.912.F-LE.1.1Archived Standard

Students are given a linear and an exponential function, one represented verbally and the other by a table. Then students are asked to compare the rate of change in each in the context of the problem.

Type: Formative Assessment

Students are given two functions, one represented verbally and the other by a table, and are asked to compare the rate of change in each in the context of the problem.

Type: Formative Assessment

Students are asked to prove that a linear function grows by equal differences over equal intervals.

Type: Formative Assessment

Students are asked to prove that an exponential function grows by equal factors over equal intervals.

Type: Formative Assessment

Students are given four verbal descriptions of functions and asked to identify each as either linear or exponential and to justify their choices.

Type: Formative Assessment

This lesson is about the Towers of Hanoi problem, a classic famous problem involving recursive thinking to reduce what appears to be a very large and difficult problem into a series of simpler ones.  The learning objective is for students to begin to understand recursive logic and thinking, relevant to computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers.   The lesson is experiential, in that each student will be working with her/his own Towers of Hanoi manipulative, inexpensively obtained.  There is no formal prerequisite, although some familiarity with set theory and functions is helpful.  The last three sections of the lesson involve some more formal concepts with recursive equations and proof by induction, so the students who work on those sections should probably be level 11 or 12 in a K-12 educational system.  The lesson has a Stop Point for 50-minute classes, followed by three more segments that may require a half to full additional class time.  So the teacher may use only those segments up to the Stop Point, or if two class sessions are to be devoted to the lesson, the entire set of segments.  Supplies are modest, and may be a set of coins or some washers from a hardware store to assemble small piles of disks in front of each student, each set of disks representing a Towers of Hanoi manipulative.  Or the students may assemble before the class a more complete Towers of Hanoi at home, as demonstrated in the video.  The classroom activities involve attempting to solve with hand and mind the Towers of Hanoi problem and discussing with fellow students patterns in the process and strategies for solution.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will explore how exponential growth and decay equations can model real-world problems. Students will also discover how manipulating the variables in an exponential equation changes the graph. Students will watch a Perspectives Video to see how exponential growth is modeled in the real world.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to interpret a situation and represent the constraints and variables mathematically, select appropriate mathematical methods to use, make sensible estimates and assumptions, investigate an exponentially increasing sequence and communicate their reasoning clearly.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to articulate verbally the relationships between variables arising in everyday contexts, translate between everyday situations and sketch graphs of relationships between variables, interpret algebraic functions in terms of the contexts in which they arise and reflect on the domains of everyday functions and in particular whether they should be discrete or continuous.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will use information from the internet or a car dealership's advertisement to identify a car and determine the future value of the car using different depreciation rates over different intervals of time. Students will graph their data to show exponential decay and compare to a linear decrease on the same graph.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is the first in a sequence of grade 9-12 physical science lessons that are organized around the big ideas that frame motion, forces, and energy. It directly precedes resource # 52648 "BIOSCOPES Summer Institute 2013 - Forces." This lesson is designed along the lines of an iterative 5-E learning cycle and employs a predict, observe, and explain (POE) activity at the beginning of the "Engage" phase in order to elicit student prior knowledge. The POE is followed by a sequence of inquiry-based activities and class discussions that are geared toward leading the students systematically through the exploration of 1-dimensional motion concepts. Included in this resource is a summative assessment as well as a teacher guide for each activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will investigate the motion of three objects of different masses undergoing free fall. Additionally, students will:

• Use spark timers to collect displacement and time data.
• Use this data to calculate the average velocity for the object during each interval.
• Graph this data on a velocity versus time graph, V-t. They find the slope of this graph to calculate acceleration.
• Calculate the falling object's acceleration from their data table and graph this data on an acceleration versus time graph, a-t.
• Use their Spark timer data paper, cut it into intervals, and paste these intervals into their displacement versus time graph.

Type: Lesson Plan

This activity has students apply their knowledge to distinguish between numerical data that can be modeled in linear or exponential forms. Students will create mathematical models (graph, equation) that represent the data and compare these models in terms of the information they show and their limitations. Students will use the models to compute additional information to predict future outcomes and make conjectures based on these predictions.

Type: Lesson Plan

Piles of Paper is a student activity that demonstrates linear and exponential growth using heights of flat and folded paper. Data tables are created and then algebraic models are developed. Real world types of linear and exponential growth are also introduced.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn about exponential growth in the context of interest earned as money is put in a savings account by examining equations, graphs, and tables in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

In this video, fire ecologist Monica Rother describes tree ring research and applications for land management.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Shark researcher, Chip Cotton, discusses the use of regression lines, slope, and determining the strength of the models he uses in his research.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Will Ryan describes how linear regression models contribute towards his research on sea anemones.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Complex problems require complex plans and training. Get in shape to get things done.

Related Resources:
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: GPS Data Set[.XLSX]
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: Path Visualization for Google Earth[.KML]

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

Lofty ideas about kites helped power a kayak from California to Hawaii.

Related Resources:
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: GPS Data Set[.XLSX]
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: Path Visualization for Google Earth[.KML]

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

A seafaring teacher filters all the good information you need to understand water purification rates for distance traveling.

Related Resources:
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: GPS Data Set[.XLSX]
KROS Pacific Ocean Kayak Journey: Path Visualization for Google Earth[.KML]

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiast

In this example, students are asked to write a function describing the population growth of algae. It is implied that this is exponential growth.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem solving task challenges students to find the linear, exponential and quadratic functions based on two points.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem solving task asks students to predict and model US population based on a chart of US population data from 1982 to 1988.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem solving task asks students to solve five exponential and linear function problems based on a US population chart for the years 1790-1860.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

The purpose of this task is to give students an opportunity to explore various aspects of exponential models (e.g., distinguishing between constant absolute growth and constant relative growth, solving equations using logarithms, applying compound interest formulas) in the context of a real world problem with ties to developing financial literacy skills. In particular, students are introduced to the idea of inflation of prices of a single commodity, and are given a very brief introduction to the notion of the Consumer Price Index for measuring inflation of a body of goods.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task gives a variation of real-life contexts which could be modeled by a linear or exponential function. The key distinguishing feature between the two is whether the change by equal factors over equal intervals (exponential functions), or by a constant increase per unit interval (linear functions). The task could either be used as an assessment problem on this distinction, or used as an introduction to the differences between these very important classes of functions.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task requires students to use the fact that on the graph of the linear function h(x) = ax + b, the y-coordinate increases by a when x increases by one. Specific values for a and b were left out intentionally to encourage students to use the above fact as opposed to computing the point of intersection, (p,q), and then computing respective function values to answer the question.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task gives students an opportunity to work with exponential functions in a real world context involving continuously compounded interest. They will study how the base of the exponential function impacts its growth rate and use logarithms to solve exponential equations.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This exploratory task requires the student to use properties of exponential functions in order to estimate how much Carbon 14 remains in a preserved plant after different amounts of time.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task involves a fairly straightforward decaying exponential. Filling out the table and developing the general formula is complicated only by the need to work with a fraction that requires decisions about rounding and precision.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task asks students to analyze a set of data from a physical context, choose a model that reasonably fits the data, and use the model to answer questions about the physical context. This variant of the task is not scaffolded; for a more scaffolded version, see F-LE Basketball Bounces, Assessment Variation 1.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

Students are asked to select the best model for a given context and use the model to make predictions.

The purpose of this task is to assess aspects of students' modeling skills in the context of standards:

F-LE.1.1.c Distinguish between situations that can be modeled with linear functions and with exponential functions; Recognize situations in which a quantity grows or decays by a constant percent rate per unit interval relative to another.

F-LE.1.2 Construct linear and exponential functions, including arithmetic and geometric sequences, given a graph, a description of a relationship, or two input-output pairs (include reading these from a table).

This task asks students to analyze a set of data from a physical context, choose a model that reasonably fits the data, and use the model to answer questions about the physical context. This variant of the task is scaffolded; for a less scaffolded version, see F-LE Basketball Bounces, Assessment Variation 2.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task requires students to use the fact that the value of an exponential function f(x) = a · b^x increases by a multiplicative factor of b when x increases by one. It intentionally omits specific values for c and d in order to encourage students to use this fact instead of computing the point of intersection, (p,q), and then computing function values to answer the question.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem assumes that students are familiar with the notation x₀ and ?x. However, the language "successive quotient" may be new.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This task assumes that students are familiar with the ?x and ?y notations. Students most likely developed this familiarity in their work with slope.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

An important property of linear functions is that they grow by equal differences over equal intervals. In F.LE Equal Differences over Equal Intervals 1, students prove this for equal intervals of length one unit, and note that in this case the equal differences have the same value as the slope.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem-solving task asks students to examine if linear modeling would be appropriate to describe and predict population growth from select years.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem-solving task provides students an opportunity to experiment with modeling real data by using population growth rates from the past two centuries.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem-solving task challenges students to write expressions and create a table to calculate how much money can be gained after investing at different banks with different interest rates.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem-solving task asks students to describe exponential growth through a real-world problem involving the illegal introduction of fish into a lake.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This problem-solving emphasizes the expectation that students know linear functions grow by constant differences over equal intervals and exponential functions grow by constant factors over equal intervals.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

This professional development resource provides a rich collection of information to help teachers engage students more effectively in mathematical modeling. It features videos of two complete lessons with commentary, background information on effective teaching, modeling, and lesson study, full lesson plans to teach both example lessons, examples of student work from the lessons, tips for effective teaching strategies, and list of helpful resources.

• In Lesson 1 students use mathematical models (tables and equations) to represent the relationship between the number of revolutions made by a "driver" and a "follower" (two connected gears in a system), and they will explain the significance of the radii of the gears in regard to this relationship.

• In Lesson 2 students mathematically model the growth of populations and use exponential functions to represent that growth.

Type: Professional Development

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

This video lesson shows students that math can play a role in understanding how an infectious disease spreads and how it can be controlled. During this lesson, students will see and use both deterministic and probabilistic models and will learn by doing through role-playing exercises. There are no formal prerequisites, as students in any high school or even middle school math class could enjoy this learning video. But more advanced classes can go into the optional applied probability modeling that accompanies the module in a downloadable pdf file. The primary exercises between video segments of this lesson are class-intensive simulation games in which members of the class 'infect' each other under alternative math modeling assumptions about disease progression. Also there is an occasional class discussion and local discussion with nearby classmates.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This lesson is designed to introduce students to the vertical line test for functions as well as practice plotting points and drawing simple functions. The lesson provides links to discussions and activities related to the vertical line test and functions as well as suggested ways to integrate them into the lesson.

Type: Virtual Manipulative

Using this virtual manipulative, students are able to graph a function and a set of ordered pairs on the same coordinate plane. The constants, coefficients, and exponents can be adjusted using slider bars, so the student can explore the affect on the graph as the function parameters are changed. Students can also examine the deviation of the data from the function. This activity includes supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet.

Type: Virtual Manipulative

In this online tool, students input a function to create a graph where the constants, coefficients, and exponents can be adjusted by slider bars. This tool allows students to explore graphs of functions and how adjusting the numbers in the function affect the graph. Using tabs at the top of the page you can also access supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet.

Type: Virtual Manipulative