Brackets for Super Bowl and School Basketball team

In the Super Bowl playoffs, brackets are used to determine which team makes it to the Super Bowl.  Are the bracketing a linear or exponential expression?

What about the bracketing system used for our High School Boys Basketball team?  Would the bracket system be a linear or exponential expression?

Can you explain why?

Which team do you think will win the Super Bowl?  The real question, how far will our boys basketball team go in the playoffs?  (This leads to probability.)

Here is a link to the boys basket ball playoffs brackets: http://www.uhsaa.org/bbasketball/2014/2A.pdf

Where to Build the Firestation?

There are three towns in a county.  They have combined their resources in order to build a fire station.  It has been agreed upon, that the fire station needs to be equal distance from the three towns.  Where should the fire station be built?  The three towns do not an equilateral triangle make.  (There isn't natural obstacle at this time to consider such as a river or mountain.)

Leap Frog

We have been discussing translations, reflections, and rotations in class.   Would you be interested in careers that involve translations, reflections, and rotations (Tessellations).  Would you want to be an animator for a film or cartoon?  Would you want to be a contractor and figure out how to build a staircase?  What about a road engineer?  What careers are you interested in that would use translations, reflections, and rotations?   To help, here is a list of tessellations that use translations, reflections and rotations:  bricks, garden pavers, tiles, mosaics, fabric design, art.

What can you do with translations, reflections, and rotations?

Why Learn Math?

My neice posted this comment on my facebook wall.

So I was talking to my little bro about math, and how I didn't understand why they make us do math when we don't even remember half the stuff they teach us a week after... Heck people they have calculators on everything! Why use up my energy on math... When I could be sleeping?!

My brother responded with: 

You don't need math....it is useless.  

• Here are the activities that require math, pick something that isn't on this list, and you won't need math:
  driving, basketball, soccer, baseball, softball, volleyball, football, golf, running, swimming, hockey, computers (everything computers), engineering, business, science, medicine, song writing, singing, dancing, some forms of art, banking, spending money, making money, librarian, law, politicians (though it seems they don't know math lately), law enforcement, there are more, I'm just tired of writing them down

Do you agree or disagree?  What do we need math for?  Below are two videos you can watch if you would like to.  Please do not try the second video below at home.

Goals for Math this year.

As the school year is beginning, I would like to have your comments on the picture below in relation to your math class this year.  How would this relate to goals you might set for math this year?



(URL: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yYwmFtcvE3c/UuKQSf734_I/AAAAAAAAAk0/zvWMjc2X8V0/w506-h543-no/14+-+1); you will find this picture.