D.E.V. - 6 Problems Summarizing What We've Learned

Above is our presentation.  I (Jacob Evenson) worked with Vlad Riggs.

My Reflection:

          My goal with the problems that I created was to incorporate as many units as possible.  I covered most of them, and Vlad's problems assured me that every unit covered in this class was shown within this presentation.  My favorite part of this class was the last unit- logs.  They were so easy for me, so it was very difficult for me to create a problem that would be even somewhat difficult.  So, for the 3rd problem I made (and 2nd in the presentation), I included 2 different parts where you have to use logs.  However, the 1st problem in this presentation was by FAR the best one I made.  I think that it required quite a bit more work than the others, and I (for whatever reason) had a lot of fun making it.  It covered factoring (both normal, AND by grouping), long division, difference of squares, and finding the domain of a radical.  It was pretty intense.
          These problems show that I understand the material by simply applying what we have learned so far.  I believe that (in my own problems) I took the hardest parts of this class (except logs), and found a way to implement them into these problem sets.  I also made most of them extremely tedious to solve, so that shows that I am able to work on the same problem for a long time without accidentally slipping up.
          It's not that I didn't like the assignment, but I don't feel that I actually learned anything from it.  I think the reason for this is the fact that the assignment was to show what we knew, and if I do that, I can't learn anything from what I already know.  However, I do think that this is a good assignment to give out.  We were allowed to pick our own due date, we were allowed to work with partners that we chose, and we didn't have to figure out anything new in order to do this project.  I think that's fantastic, and it makes for a better grade than if someone had to work with someone who didn't work, and they had to learn a new theory or formula in the process.  I think the only thing you can do to improve it would be to assign it very early in the trimester.  This would allow the students to create a problem based on the unit they had just gone through, and not allow it to just sit in their head unused.  In addition, this would help ensure that the students were finished by the due date, in addition to having better examples of problems they could create to show their proficiency in the class.


Vlad's Reflection:

I chose the concept of rational functions because I really liked it.  All of my problems in one way or another incorporated this unit.  We had not done much with rationals before this year and I liked the idea of asymptotes.  When I figured out how to find the horizontal and vertical asymptotes, everything such as x and y-intercepts easily fell into place.  I also wanted to mix in some of the other units like radicals and quadratics because I like combining different things that I learned into one problem.  These problems show that I am able to apply different skills to create new problems that I can actually solve.  I took something from almost every unit and used it in my problem set.  This proves I can successfully use and solve complex math problems involving different functions.  Overall, I found this project to be educationally valuable to me.  I did not “learn” anything, but it gave me a chance to do some higher level thinking that our school system does not value anymore.  This project allowed me to think outside of the box to create problems, which I like and wish we did it more often.  All in all, I enjoyed how this project gave me the freedom to not worry so much on the structure of the project, but focus on the ideas and concepts of the functions that we have learned this trimester.  In the future, it would be nice if you taught some applicable scenarios of how to use these functions so students could create more “ meaningful” problems.