IB Maths Resources from Intermathematics
IB Maths Resources: 300 IB Maths Exploration ideas, video tutorials and Exploration Guides
Roll or bust? A strategy for dice games Let's explore some strategies for getting the best outcome for some dice games. Game 1: 1 dice, bust on 1. We roll 1 dice. However we can roll as many times as we like and add the score each time. We can choose to stop when we... Continue Reading →
This is a nice example of using some maths to solve a puzzle from the mindyourdecisions youtube channel (screencaptures from the video). How to Avoid The Troll: A Puzzle In these situations it's best to look at the extreme case first so you get some idea of the problem. If you are feeling particularly pessimistic... Continue Reading →
Statistics to win penalty shoot-outs The last World Cup was a relatively rare one for England, with no heroic defeat on penalties, as normally seems to happen. England are in fact the worst country of any of the major footballing nations at taking penalties, having won only 1 out of 6 shoot-outs at the Euros... Continue Reading →
Game Theory and Tic Tac Toe The game of Noughts and Crosses or Tic Tac Toe is well known throughout the world and variants are thought to have been played over 2000 years ago in Rome. It's a very simple game - the first person to get 3 in a row wins. In fact it's... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vqr3_ROIk The video above is a great example of "mathemagic" - magic through maths. Arthur Benjamin's show at TED (using a mixture of mathematical tricks and savant like numerical ability) shows how numerical calculations can still produce a sense of awe and wonder. Probably the best resource for "mathemagic" is the TES Word ebook from... Continue Reading →
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0 The Gorilla in the Room and Other Great Maths Investigations These topics are a great way to add interest to statistics and probability lessons at KS3 and KS4 level, and also a good example of investigations that IB students can conduct. They also have a nice link to ToK - how can we believe... Continue Reading →
Cracking ISBN and Credit Card Codes ISBN codes are used on all books published worldwide. It’s a very powerful and useful code, because it has been designed so that if you enter the wrong ISBN code the computer will immediately know – so that you don’t end up with the wrong book. There is lots... Continue Reading →
A maths song sung by current flavour of the month One Direction - follow the lyrics to arrive at the total. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIpdV9jSpXU Some of the best maths songs are by Learning Upgrade, such as, videos on circle formulae, fractions, exponents, the quadratic formula and the one below, "Mean, Median and Mode": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uydzT_WiRz4 Some other good maths songs:... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite resources is the Jeopardy quizzes. For those not familiar with the game (I think it's American), it's a gameshow, where you get to choose questions of different levels of difficulty, from a range of categories. I downloaded the template from TES - it's a ready-made powerpoint which you can click on... Continue Reading →
This is another interesting maths sequence puzzle: When x = 1, y = 1, when x= 2, y = -1, when x = 3, y = 1, a) if when x = 4, y = -1, what formula gives the nth term? b) if when x = 4, y = 3, what formula gives the... Continue Reading →
This is a great resource from Mr Collins - Maths Pictionary. What I like about this is that it can be incorporated into a large number of classroom activities - from Jeopardy games, to starters to topic revision. It can also be easily adapted to everything from KS3 to IB - and can be a... Continue Reading →
This is a really nice puzzle we looked at at the IB HL workshop: When x = 1, y = 1, when x = 2, y = 2, when x = 3, y = 3 but when x = 4, y does not equal 4. Find a sequence which describes these points. There are... Continue Reading →
Maths Dingbats are great for lesson starters and for using in quizzes - I've uploaded about 50 to this website here. These one all use some maths terms to generate the answer There is a big powerpoint file with about 50 more here. These ones all give a maths related word as the answer. and... Continue Reading →
Bingo works great as a starter and plenary activity. It's surprising how much students enjoy this game. Even better, there are so many ready created games on TES, you'll never even have to make your own. TES collection number 1 TES collection number 2
Code breaking is a good activity to introduce problem solving skills and real world careers for mathematicians. Code Cracking worksheets Marcus De Satouy video explaining codes Counton website to generate different codes Nice Morse Code Generator Numberphile also have a good introduction to public key encryption using prime numbers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7kEpw1tn50
Maths CSI is a really good revision resource from Laura Rees Hughes - students work in groups to solve clues, eliminate suspects and arrive at the culprit. IGCSE Number CSI TES Collection of GCSE Number, Algebra, Geometry, Data Handling, KS3 mixed and Grade C GCSE Revision.
Another variation on a gameshow theme - Maths Blockbusters is a good way of introducing competition into the class. It works well splitting the class (say) girls versus boys - with all pairs of students given whiteboards. When it's the boys' question, all the boys must raise their whiteboards with the answers. Any incorrect answers... Continue Reading →
There are a real variety of treasure hunt resources on TES - and these are great for adding a bit of momentum to a lesson. 1a) Find the Treasure is a IGCSE activity for using loci and constructions to find the buried treasure. 1b) Loci and constructions to find the murderer from map instructions. 2)... Continue Reading →
Maths Tarsia are one of the best group activities for maths - there are already a large number of Tarsia puzzles on TES Secondary Maths Resources but most of these relate to A level rather than IB. I've uploaded a few more specifically for IB here . There include: HL or SL: Binomial distribution Probability... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite resources is Jeopardy. For those not familiar with the game (I think it's American), it's a gameshow, where you get to choose questions of different levels of difficulty, from a range of categories. I downloaded the template from TES - it's a ready-made powerpoint which you can click on to take... Continue Reading →