What’s Goin’ On In Room 133

Posts Tagged ‘exponent’

Colleagues, dear colleagues.  We have come so far in such a short time.  Normally, I put our video links on our Great Links Abound! page (and you do want to check there for new stuff from time to time).  But I want to put these two in a post because it reminds us that all math is inter-related.  When we truly understand the properties of our extraordinary number system, we find that we spend less time crunching numbers and more time exploring ideas.  

Now, mind you, these links won’t illustrate that last point; that’s just your crazy Mr Edwards going off again about math!  And these links are not spectacular; they just show a lady going over some math problems.  But they DO remind us about a few things we have learned this year – and applies them to what we are doing now.  So get a pencil, a small notepad and your favorite hot beverage and click away!  (And when it really starts gettin’ good to ya - try not to spill that stuff on your keyboard, okay? )

Math Lab Lady – Part 1

Math Lab Lady – Part 2

Howdy, Colleagues!  Tell me, how do you evaluate 2² x  3³  x  4⁴ ?  Tell me what the steps are, and then evaluate the expression.  And love the beautiful cooks who gave you all that left-over turkey, you know?  Rock on!

You’ll find discussion of our exponents and properties in Lessons 4-2, 1-4, 3-1 and 3-2.  Yeah, we have to skip around the book a bit to keep everything in order, but that’s ok.  As long as we take our knowledge of parentheses, exponents and always remember to Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Suzie (PEMDAS), we will soon emerge in good standing on our good properties – the Commutative, the Associative and last but not least, the all-important Distributive Properties!

We’ve looked at expressions, order of operations and even substituted a few variables along the way.  We are now able to evaulate algebraic expressions if we are given a value for the variable (such as “if x=6, then what is 3x?).  Now it’s time to apply some of that knowledge using exponents (”We answer to a higher power!”) and properties (”Get off my land, y’ varmint!”).  Seriously, take a look at Lesson 4-2 on pages 153 thru 155.  We’ll do homework on Monday from page 155, ques 8 thru 23.