I was lucky to do some work behind the scenes with the promotion promising a $1 billion prize if someone filled out a perfect bracket during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Lots of fun (and some fairly advanced) math and I think a great example for kids to see a neat “real world” math problem..

http://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/perfect-brackets/

This is exactly why it takes up until graduate school in order for many students get to see what math is all about – creating instead of following.

To give one example: In my text analysis class we’re trying to figure out how to compare two documents (say a sentence on a web page).

One could say “I really like Lebron James because he has a high shooting percentage, defends well, and gets his teammates involved.”

Another could say “Lebron James is overrated, he doesn’t rebound well, his shooting percentage is not that high, and anyone who defends him is dumb.”

We learn to “vectorize” the sentences and see the commonalities and differences in the words used in order to create a model that tries to determine overall feelings. It’s called sentiment analysis, a part of machine learning (artificial intelligence).

But vector work in and of itself is dreadful. No one wants to calculate cross products or dot products. But the ideas behind them – how do we determine what words are relevant? And the results! It’s amazing how accurate a simple model like this is…. What lives behind the algorithms is wonderfully perplexing.

What I really struggle to understand is, why can’t we start with these types of analysis to introduce tools around vector manipulation rather than the two years of classes on matrices that I was forced to take that were completely devoid of context and mainly involved definition and proof memorization? We try to follow the footsteps of these medieval mathematicians who were doing mathematics for its own sake, but there are way more interesting applications, cutting edge stuff, that most of my high schoolers last year could have done.

I think you could expand out the meaning of “teach” in this context. When it comes to pseudocontext and window dressing around number grinding I completely agree with you. But I think the reporter’s angle could have some value in how sports can be a motivating factor for gaining competency.

If you at all like baseball and weren’t aware of Sabermetrics then reading Moneyball is a hugely exciting experience. It tweaks that part of our brains that I think is critically important for math learning – the desire to figure something out, and get one up on everyone else. We’re wired to get excited by that new tool, whether it be a cool bat or a new iphone.

Yeah, doing the same old calculator work with some sports labels is pointless. But for someone interested in Baseball in a way they aren’t interested in engineering I can see learning a new way to visualize a player’s worth as a motivator. It’s not like lifting weights to gain muscle is all that thrilling, but knowing it’s how you hit the ball farther can motivate you through those boring and painful bits.

If I can drop a book recommendation here:

Statistical Reasoning in Sports

(One of the co-authors works in my district.)

Try the sample chapters. Chapter 1 opens with “Did LeBron James choke in the 2008 playoffs?”

Puppies? Did someone say, “Puppies”? OK, now I am engaged.

First, I am reminded of the tweet from some girl sth like “Never mind the relevance, I know it is, my problem is passing this damn class.”

Too perfect.

Second (and related) I am reminded of a rule in football: do not run your plays away from the great player, run them at them. Run the other way and they run you down from behind anyway. Like the young lady above: someone tried the relevance ploy on her and she saw through it like especially thin cellophane.

The right way to teach math is first to love it for itself, and then convey that. Attack the indifference head on, with your own greatest strength: math has elegance, power, and beauty.

If yer gonna die, die trying. Do not deny mathematics three times before the dawn. The puppies need their sleep.

Putting math into a context IS important, if only to remind students that they can and should use abstract math outside the math classroom. It is also very important to use a wide variety of contexts, so that all students get to see at least a few applications in areas that interest them. We have often found that seeing a few applications which students find interesting makes them more willing to put up with either pure math or contexts that don’t interest them (e.g., sports for those with no interest in sports, or puppy nutrition for those with no interest in animals).
Still, Dan hits the nail on the head in emphasizing that interesting work is more important than an interesting context. Fortunately, the world of careers is moving in a direction that favors interesting math work. Outside of school, the most dull and boring stuff (plugging numbers into formulas, solving algebraic equations and more) is very often done by computers. Good paying jobs depend more on the ability to set up the problems, to understand the difference between linear and other best fit options, and other higher-level problem solving skills.
Maybe there still needs to be some uninteresting, algorithm-based work in math classes (long division?), but there also needs to be an ample portion of work that is both interesting and important beyond the math class.

Maybe you’re right from a mathematical context, but through the eyes of an educator, I think you’re passing up on an opportunity. Isn’t it our jobs as teachers not to decide for them what’s “boring” and “interesting”, but yet give them the knowledge and opportunity to make that decision for themselves? Sure, math will never be as “sexy” as sports, which is what makes sports so recreational – we can just go play or watch a game and get lost in it. Not try to introduce math into a students’ recreational life because you think it’ll be too “boring”? I guess I need to read Willingham’s book to understand this more.
You’re famous for your “is my shot going to go in?” experiment. I feel like there’s something you could’ve done along those lines to bring math and formulas into sport. Is my favorite team going to win the championship this year? Then use math as the means to the end response.
You’re good Mr. Meyer, but in this instance I feel you have up too easy, and I think it’s unfair you get to decide what’s boring to students. I was once told that as teachers we have one school day for every student we are going to try to reach on a personal level, and you may have just missed one.

I looked at NBA Math Hoops, did not see much math. Maybe 5% of the time spent playing the game goes into math, right? All that to teach number facts? With the number facts not at all relevant to basketball? You just have to find a square on the board that matches one of the results of all the possible computations off the dice throw?

I find this to be insulting to students. It says “we are going to trick you into learning number facts”. But kids are terribly bright. They know what we are doing when we wrap content in a game, especially in such a meaningless way. And when they see us doing that, they hear “The grown-ups concede that math is pointless so let’s bury it in a game.” Where it affects like 10% of the play.

Where is the math in the draft? The decision to foul? Is the probability of the three vs the two ever computed, or do they just see that the spinner wedge is a little smaller?

By the way, I hate hearing neither that math instruction needs to be better nor that schools should be turned inside out. But silly games that do not all make math relevant will not be part of that.

This is a great question. It’s also been much studied.

My understanding is that relevance to interests is not the panacea to motivation for math that at first it appears to me.

I read a book recently that devoted entire chapters to this question: “Mathematics Education for a New Era.” Devlin was not encouraging in his presentation of research as a way to infuse math study with some energy. Of course, he seems to believe the current math curriculum should just die from irrelevance and be replaced with a new technology-based conceptual one.

BTW, I totally agree with him.

There is a curriculum for Fantasy Football in the classroom. It is largely based on students calculating the scores of their teams every week–which I’ve always tended to agree (is monotonous and boring). But I’m starting a league for a class full of kids, trying to think of ways to use fantasy football/mathematics in an engaging way.

I’m thinking they still calculate the totals, because it has to be done. But also, some sort of data analysis program where kids look at the relevant statistics and make decisions based on them.

Clara Maxcy said:
Students, particularly 7-11, even some 12 graders, don’t know how much is out there that they don’t know.

The advice I give to virtually everyone I meet who is thinking about the future is: Before you decide there is something you want to do or become, talk to someone who has done it.

My final semester of undergraduate studies in engineering, we had a series of engineers from industry come in and discuss what they actually did. OMG! Where were they during my first semester when I really needed this kind of insight? Even in high school, I believe it would be beneficial for actual doctors, engineers, etc. to come in and talk not to seniors, but to freshmen to give them some insight as to what will be required of them four years hence. It is all well and good to try to make individual classes interesting, but students should keep their eye on the goal.

Conversely, it would be almost equally good to have some minimum wage graduates come in and cite the consequences of not preparing for life after graduation.