eeps resources

EGADs—a possible new book

EGADs are Explorations in Geometry Algebra and Data. You measure stuff to get data, and then integrate your understanding of the geometry of the situation with how you represent the measurements algebraically in order to come up with mathematical models for your data.

Here is a pdf file (about 1.3 M) for 36 pages of EGADs, in a very preliminary, drafty form. You may use it with students. Please let me know what happens! (New version updated April 2008.)

Here is the derivation we refer to in the EGADS "Tinkertoy" activity. It derives the general form for going from a linear recurrence relation to its analytic counterpart. We didn't know what that meant either until we needed it to analyze the lengths of Tinkertoys. (800K pdf)

Paragraphs Handout

Here is a pdf file (about 100 K) for the fabulous paragraphs activity. It's free! You have permission to copy it.

Find Free Fun Physics Fiction in the Annals of Plausibility!

You're teaching high-school or college physics. You want to assign open-ended investigations, but you need some structure. Here is a collection of "fake" physics papers. We propose these as an interesting genre of assignment. Students are to respond to a more-or-less theoretical paper by designing an experiment to test the theory. ideally, they write a paper—in the same style—as a response.

Oh: and while all of the papers are believable, every last one is wrong.

We're tentatively calling it Annals of Plausibility. Send us papers of your own—and student work—and we will post them!
DOWNLOAD the Annals of Plausibility (449 kB, )

Projects eeps home	Resources For resources on books, see the book pages directly: A Den of Inquiry, volumes 1 and 2 United We Solve Get It Together Fifty Fathoms Here is where you can download handouts, read papers we have written, see notes from talks, etc.
handouts	EGADs—a possible new book EGADs are Explorations in Geometry Algebra and Data. You measure stuff to get data, and then integrate your understanding of the geometry of the situation with how you represent the measurements algebraically in order to come up with mathematical models for your data. Here is a pdf file (about 1.3 M) for 36 pages of EGADs, in a very preliminary, drafty form. You may use it with students. Please let me know what happens! (New version updated April 2008.) Here is the derivation we refer to in the EGADS "Tinkertoy" activity. It derives the general form for going from a linear recurrence relation to its analytic counterpart. We didn't know what that meant either until we needed it to analyze the lengths of Tinkertoys. (800K pdf) Paragraphs Handout Here is a pdf file (about 100 K) for the fabulous paragraphs activity. It's free! You have permission to copy it. Find Free Fun Physics Fiction in the Annals of Plausibility! You're teaching high-school or college physics. You want to assign open-ended investigations, but you need some structure. Here is a collection of "fake" physics papers. We propose these as an interesting genre of assignment. Students are to respond to a more-or-less theoretical paper by designing an experiment to test the theory. ideally, they write a paper—in the same style—as a response. Oh: and while all of the papers are believable, every last one is wrong. We're tentatively calling it Annals of Plausibility. Send us papers of your own—and student work—and we will post them! DOWNLOAD the Annals of Plausibility (449 kB, )
papers	Erickson, Tim. 2007. "A Pretty Good Fit." submitted to The Mathematics Teacher. This article is about the conceptual advantages of using sliders and residuals over automatic least-squares fitting. Note This is a preprint. TMT will own it. Do Not Cite without permission! A Pretty Good Fit(292 KB ) Erickson, Tim. 2007. "Wave Slicing: Exploring Periodic Functions." submitted to The Mathematics Teacher. Finding the period of periodic data by chopping it up and dynamically superimposing the slices. Way cool use of Fathom or Logger Pro. Note This is a preprint. TMT will own it. Do Not Cite without permission! Wave Slicing(152 KB ) Erickson, Tim and Ayars, Eric. 2005. "Fake Papers as Investigation Prompts." Physics Education 40 550–555. This is a paper about using fake papers like the ones above in the Annals of Plausibility. Go to Journal's Site Erickson, Tim. 2005. "Stealing from Physics: Modeling with Mathematical Functions in Data-Rich Contexts." Teaching Mathematics and its Applications. 25 23–32. Also presented at ICME-2004. Go to Journal's Site Tim's talk at NCNAAPT, Gunn HS, Palo Alto, November 2004. "When you have to think inside the box." Look at the paper, Thinking Inside the Box(1.2 MB ) (same as the one below) Bryan Cooley's MASTERS research! " Student Challenges Integrating Math and Physics with Data Analysis" Erickson, Tim. 2004. "Ntigrams: special-purpose histograms that solve some pernicious problems" soon to be submitted somewhere. where you think it belongs! Teaching Statistics? Do not cite without permission. DOWNLOAD NOW (120 kB ) Erickson, Tim. 2004. "A Fresh Start for Science Labs: Three Springboards to Inquiry" soon to be submitted somewhere. where you think it belongs! Science Teacher? Do not cite without permission. DOWNLOAD NOW (100 kB ) Erickson, Tim. 2004. "Thinking Inside the Box: A Normal-Force Experiment Yields Unexpected Insights" Submitted to The Physics Teacher. Do not cite without permission. DOWNLOAD NOW (1.2 MB ) Erickson, Tim. 2004. "Learning about Functions in a Data-Rich Environment." Submutted to ICME-2004, but it turned out they only let you submit one. So cite this site for now. DOWNLOAD NOW (320 kB ) Erickson, Tim. 2002. "Technology, Statistics, and Subtleties of Measurement: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Mathematics." Presented at the 6th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-6). Go to HTML version Our NSF/SBIR Phase I final report, "Integrating Mathematics and Science through Data"
files	Here we put links to a few useful files. A Fathom Skew and Kurtosis file.
talks	Notes from Tim's AAPT 2003 presentation about data analysis with real astronomy data Making Sense of All the Numbers: Data Analysis for Mortals Bryan Cooley's NCNAAPT presentation, November 2003 "Data Analysis Strategies of Students in a 'Millican' Simulation Experiment" Tim's NCTM 2003 presentation, "A Taste of Science: Introduction to Data Analysis with Fathom" . This was never actually presented, so the page has only the abstract. Notes from Tim's NCTM 2001 presentation, "Don't Expect the Expected Value"
listservs	These are not from here, of course, but are useful: Physhare (sharing ideas for secondary physics education) apstat (Advanced Placement statistics) archives \| sign up Fathom listserv PhysLrnr (physics education research)
software	Here we put links to current versions of software we're using in the Natureof Science project. yourSQL \| php \| MySQL