New Labs
There are a wide variety of financial literacy problems. This is the kind of problem that appears on many tests.…Read more
The rule of 72 is an old banker’s rule of thumb to find out how long it will take to…Read more
Manage a business. The Lemonade Stand has been a business simulation developed in many different versions. We believe this is the…Read more
Spreadsheets can be a great place for you to build your own games. Ryan has built one of his early…Read more
Are you a coffee drinker? Small daily expenses like coffee can quickly add up. By using spreadsheets to organize cost,…Read more
How much are your credit cards costing you? If you are like most of us, they are very expensive because…Read more
Which form of interest, simple or compound, is the fairest? If you were buying a house or a car which…Read more
How should you figure out your profit? If you have an item that you are selling, should you price it…Read more
How much money do you spend? How much money can you save? We all need to know these things, but…Read more
Use spreadsheets to compare popular phone carriers and the plans they offer. [sdm_download…Read more
Have you ever played Sudoku? It is fun and challenging. You have to find the numbers from 1 to 9…Read more
If you commute to work or school, you understand how expensive driving can be. Choose a car in this interactive…Read more
If you are in the market for a new car, you often have a decision to make. Do you want…Read more
Suppose Briley has 10 coins in quarters and dimes and has a total of $1.45. How many of each coin…Read more
The GDP or Gross Domestic Product of a country is one measure of its wealth. What can this data tell…Read more
Introduction to Spreadsheets
In introducing Spreadsheets we want you to learn to build a numberline by using a rule (a formula). We begin with a…Read more
Number Lines introduce students to functional thinking and the use of formulas in spreadsheets. For younger students we call these…Read more
We have been using cell addresses informally until now, but now we can be more formal and explicit. Different spreadsheets…Read more
We use the hundreds table to introduce rows and columns and focus students on seeing the patterns in these tables.…Read more
Students are tasked to build a times table in just two steps. They have to learn to use absolute as…Read more
This is the graduation exercise for the basic use of spreadsheets. We combine rules and addressing to have students build…Read more
Graphs as we know them were first invented by Galileo. They are powerful images of functions. I will introduce you…Read more
What is "x"? Or how do we represent variables and functions on spreadsheets? …Read more
Algebra
Most museums with math exhibits have a Pascal’s triangle made up of pegs with balls falling down between them and…Read more
Spreadsheets make it very easy to switch axes and add graphs. They enable students to play with what may have…Read more
George is in New York and Martha is in Washington. They leave at the same time and follow the same…Read more
We often see Lissajous figures in old sci-fi movies because they are so cool. As you play with them I…Read more
Parametric equations are powerful tools to model projectile motions and to graph things that are not functions like circle or…Read more
Geometry
Spreadsheets with their natural grid make a great, though not entirely flexible, platform for architectural design and for working with…Read more
Using the times table, students can see that products are always rectangles, and that they represent the area of that…Read more
Shapes introduces student to changing the colors in cells and to changing the shapes of cells by dragging the column…Read more
Parentheses are very important in spreadsheets because like all programming, spreadsheet formulas have to be very specific. A big formula,…Read more
Fractals are a new 21st century mathematics. They are patterns that repeat themselves at various scales. This one is based…Read more
Scatterplot graphs enable us to build shapes using spreadsheets and to practice transformational geometry. They are surprisingly flexible tools. And…Read more
Strings need not begin and end on axes that are at right angles to each other which we call Cartesian.…Read more
Create, manipulate, and explore triangles in this live interactive spreadsheet. On the surface, a triangle is being drawn on a…Read more
Though spreadsheets lets you put geometric shapes on the screen, those shapes are not connected with the cells and cannot…Read more
The usual way to make string diagrams using rubber bands or yarn on a board with nails does not allow…Read more
When I was young I loved to play with planetary data, to explore their patterns, to learn more about astronomy,…Read more
Probability / Statistics
Another famous pattern, Pascal’s triangle, is easy to construct and explore on spreadsheets. Create a formula for any cell that…Read more
In 1941, Joe DiMaggio got a hit in 56 straight games. This record has never been beaten. Some say it…Read more
You just won the Lottery worth $600,000,000. You have a choice between taking it as a lump sum of $376.9…Read more
That probability is multiplicative is not an easy concept for many of us. Using the spreadsheet with our ability to…Read more
In a class of 23 students, the chances are fifty-fifty that two of them will have the same birthday. Now…Read more
Financial Reasoning
- The rule of 72 is an old banker’s rule of thumb to find out how long it will take to…Read more
- Suppose Briley has 10 coins in quarters and dimes and has a total of $1.45. How many of each coin…Read more
- Use spreadsheets to compare popular phone carriers and the plans they offer. [sdm_download…Read more
- There are a wide variety of financial literacy problems. This is the kind of problem that appears on many tests.…Read more
- How should you figure out your profit? If you have an item that you are selling, should you price it…Read more
- The GDP or Gross Domestic Product of a country is one measure of its wealth. What can this data tell…Read more
- How much are your credit cards costing you? If you are like most of us, they are very expensive because…Read more
- If you commute to work or school, you understand how expensive driving can be. Choose a car in this interactive…Read more
- If you are in the market for a new car, you often have a decision to make. Do you want…Read more
- Which form of interest, simple or compound, is the fairest? If you were buying a house or a car which…Read more
- Are you a coffee drinker? Small daily expenses like coffee can quickly add up. By using spreadsheets to organize cost,…Read more
- Manage a business. The Lemonade Stand has been a business simulation developed in many different versions. We believe this is the…Read more
- How much money do you spend? How much money can you save? We all need to know these things, but…Read more
Math and Design
Multiplication tables have some wonderful and quite surprising patterns. This is one of them. Draw any rectangle in a multiplication…Read more
Pennies to Heaven is a Fermi Problem, basically a “headmath” experiment. Fermi Problems, originally developed by Enrico Fermi, one of…Read more- Fractals are a new 21st century mathematics. They are patterns that repeat themselves at various scales. This one is based…Read more
We take that great old problem of the inventor of chess and the ruler of India and use it to…Read more- Scatterplot graphs enable us to build shapes using spreadsheets and to practice transformational geometry. They are surprisingly flexible tools. And…Read more
- Strings need not begin and end on axes that are at right angles to each other which we call Cartesian.…Read more
- Spreadsheets can be a great place for you to build your own games. Ryan has built one of his early…Read more
How many of the numbers from 1 to 100 are in the times table? All, Most, Less than half? I…Read more
Let's do a little target practice with this spreadsheet projectile simulator, which will map out the flight path of an…Read more- Have you ever played Sudoku? It is fun and challenging. You have to find the numbers from 1 to 9…Read more
- Though spreadsheets lets you put geometric shapes on the screen, those shapes are not connected with the cells and cannot…Read more
- The usual way to make string diagrams using rubber bands or yarn on a board with nails does not allow…Read more
What if you made a series of unit fractions with the odd numbers as their denominator, added the first two…Read more