A-Maize-ing Mathematics
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In the set of percentage change activities described in this article, students learn about food scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa, how two specific viruses are spreading through maize in the region, and how scientists are using mathematical modeling to solve the problem. This context was particularly relevant to my students who live in the Mississippi Delta, an area where agriculture is the dominant industry. In this activity, students use spreadsheets to perform calculations on a set of data. The goals of this activity, designed for a prealgebra or algebra class, are to encourage students to examine how percentage change is computed in real-world problems, to look for and analyze patterns, and to create their own functions on the basis of actual data.
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Contributor Notes
Liza Bondurant, lbondurant@deltastate.edu, is an assistant professor of mathematics at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Her research focuses on the beliefs, practices, and tools that contribute to mathematics teacher effectiveness and large-scale data analysis.
