Extreme Math: Real Math, Real People, Real Sports - Softcover

Washington Tyler, Marya; Tyler, Kip

9781882664962: Extreme Math: Real Math, Real People, Real Sports

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1882664965 ISBN 13: 9781882664962

Publisher: Prufrock Press, 2004

Imagine your students tackling math word problems drawn from the extreme sports of polar ice swimming, scuba diving, and adventure racing. World champion athletes (like Erik Weihenmeyer, the first blind man to climb Mount Everest) present real math problems they face while scaling peaks, hang gliding off cliffs, kayaking over waterfalls, riding raging bulls, and plunging down steep cliffs on mountain bikes.

Taught by the athletes, using basic multiplication, division, fractions, and percentages, your students will figure out that math is essential even in the world of extreme sports . . . and it can be fun!

Activities include:

Polar bear swimmers: How many strokes will it take us to swim across this hole in the ice?
Master skydiver: How many miles have we fallen so far?
Master scuba divers: How long will our air tanks last at 99 feet under water?
World champion kayaker: How tall is this waterfall, anyway?
High school rodeo champion: How much money do I get if I win?
World champion adventure racer: How many calories do we need to pack for a 6-day race across glaciers, arid peaks, thick brush, and mangrove swamps?
Master hang glider: How do you get this thing to go down?

Like the authors' previous book, the best-selling Real Life Math Mysteries, the word problems in this book are real, alive, and clearly focused. Each problem is provided on a reproducible handout and includes problem-solving suggestions with a comprehensive answer key. Many of the athletes share their thoughts and encouragement to study hard in school. All activities are tied to the standards established by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

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About the Author:

Marya Washington Tyler holds a master's degree in gifted education from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and a multidisciplinary bachelor's degree from Michigan State University. She has four gifted children, and has taught gifted students in Michigan, Wisconsin, Idaho, Alaska and Washington over a period of 20 years.

Near the beginning of her teaching career, when the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) began calling for real world mathematics in the curriculum, Marya looked for such materials, but found only feeble efforts. Her neighbors in Marshfield, Wisconsin, willingly shared with her the math puzzles they regularly face as farmers, administrators, firemen, veterinarians, archeologists, detectives, etc., and their words became her first book, Real Life Math Mysteries. Marya then tapped the humor and insight of son David, and his friend Asa, both gifted elementary students, to write It s Alive! and It's Alive and Kicking!, books which restore the warm tingle of life to even the driest mathematical computation. Within a year, Marya joined two more friends to produce Alien Math, a self-guided tour of number bases (as they are used around the galaxy).

Marya continues to lead the movement to enliven the study of mathematics with the odd, the incredible, the wild and the real. She and husband Kip collaborated on Extreme Math after intense meetings with champion mountain climbers, whitewater kayakers, hang gliders, scuba divers, bronco riders, and adventure racers. Their latest book, More Real Life Math Mysteries, presents photos and as-real-as-it-gets math problems, as explained by the dog mushers, elephant trainers, kayak guides, beekeepers, float plane pilots, and more.

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