Barry Kissane describes a statistical modelling activity using a graphics calculator. Senior secondary students can explore Bureau of Meteorology data to determine whether the number of years with record breaking temperatures are more than expected--a sort of global warming null hypothesis.

The Birthday Paradox problem can be investigated either with a carefully constructed spreadsheet (for greatest precision) or a calculator process (for reasonable precision). A number of ways of approaching this problem as a class activity are provided.

Prospective teachers and cryptography students use programming, statistics and guile to enrich both their courses.

Educational games provide a fun introduction to new material and a review of mathematical algorithms. Specifically, games can be designed to assist students in developing mathematical skills as an incidental consequence of the game-playing process. The programs presented in this article are adaptations of board games or television shows that…

Tossing a fair coin 1000 times can have an unexpected result. In the activities presented here, players keep track of the accumulated total for heads and tails after each toss, noting which player is in the lead or whether the players are tied. The winner is the player who was in the lead for the higher number of turns over the course of the game.…

An iPad® can be used to teach students to graph parabolas with ease and grasp vocabulary quickly. Parabolas come to life for students in this easily implemented activity described in this article. Teachers can use this tool in a fun and interactive way to not only address these graphing and vocabulary concepts but also introduce and explore…

Inclusion and differentiation--hallmarks of the current educational system--require a paradigm shift in the way that educators run their classrooms. This article enumerates the need for techno-kinesthetic, visually based activities and offers an example of a calculator-based programming activity that addresses that need. After discussing the use…

If students are to understand inferential statistics successfully, they must have a profound understanding of the nature of the sampling distribution. Specifically, they must comprehend the determination of the expected value and standard error of a sampling distribution as well as the meaning of the central limit theorem. Many students in a high…

Although the nature of the research varies, as do concepts of angle, research in general supports the supposition that angle is a complex idea, best understood from a variety of perspectives. In fact, the concept of angle tends to be threefold, consisting of: (1) the traditional, static notion of two rays meeting at a common vertex; (2) the idea…

Provided is an activity designed to give grades 7-12 students opportunities to discover numerical patterns and to derive general conclusions from observing data. The activity focuses attention on patterns in products such as 33x34, 333x334, and 3333x3334. Three worksheets and answers are included. (JN)

Students, parents, and sometimes even teachers often believe that complex mathematics is too difficult for certain learners. But the programs described in this article demonstrate that anyone can learn, understand, and use complex math. Lesa M. Covington-Clarkson boosted the confidence of black 6th graders by teaching them to use graphing…

Presented are instructions for activities in which a calculator is used to investigate algebraic concepts. Also presented are short computer programs involving topics taught in prealgebra and an activity in which a trapezoid is transformed into a circle. (JN)

The article relates the British PrIME (Primary Initiatives in Mathematical Education) Project to children with special educational needs doing mathematics. The project's main aim is to improve the mathematical understanding and teaching skills of primary teachers. Activities using calculators are described. (DB)

This brief report describes an exploratory pilot project in which sixth-grade students used hand-held calculators throughout the school year. The report includes guidelines on the purchase and use of calculators as well as advice on gaining community support for such a project. Issues related to classroom management are discussed; in particular,…

Handheld devices, most familiar to educators today in the form of graphing calculators, are rapidly improving their interface, computational, and communication capabilities. Communication capabilities allow participants to rapidly share mathematical objects among their handhelds, potentially contributing to improved classroom discourse. We have…