Math Technology 2014 Correction of Errors

When I worked in the private sector, we used to have a meeting and talk about how to make a big even better for the next year. I would like to take a few minutes to document my ideas to make 2nd semester Math Technology better next year.

 Opportunity to do better

 Throughout the 1st and 2nd semester I had students record data to later use in their budget projects. They did a terrible job of this, those days went wasted because they did not keep track of any of it. To do a better job of this, I should have made them start their budget at the start of the year then done each section of it as the year progressed. This would also mean that the last 3 weeks of class don't need to be spent redoing that work in preparation for the term project.

 Successes

 I had a lot of success this year, it went much better than last year (aside from counselors using admin to interfere with my classes). My students spent way more time working with spreadsheets and doing higher order thinking exercises using the solvers on the Casio calculators. They analyzed a lot of things which I think will have a lasting effect on them.

 The last quarter of 12th grade needs to be as uneventful as possible. For this reason, I finished all of the unit exams early. This left no surprises in the grades so the end of the term was very predictable. The investopedia activity has gone remarkably also. The kids were carefully researching and constantly checking their portfolios. They were thinking critically, analyzing trends with statistical methods beyond what I could've come up with otherwise. There was a lot of excitement too. Investopedia is my favorite site for this, it's all free. Plus, if the students are interested, they can sign up for all sorts of investment newsletters.

 I will comment on this thread as to other ideas that come to mind. If you guys (my Math Tech team) have any suggestions for next year, please comment.

Phoenix Union Pick the Winners Competition 2014!

This is designed to be a 3-6 week long competition to see which Math Technology student can make the most of a $100,000 investment portfolio using the Investopedia Website. 

I have already set up the game, my game title is PhxMathTech2014.  You can search phx and find it.  At the bottom of this post are the settings of the game which I can modify if needed but I think these should work.  Please note that the game is over on May 18^th.  Students can print out their standings in the meantime but the game will end at that time. 

To access the game:  PhxMathTech2014

www.investopedia.com

 “continue to site”

 Simulator

Simulator drop menu –login

create new account *no need to subscribe to newsletters

‘my home’

Add/edit games

Join a game

Search

PhxMathTech2014  is the game that I set up. 

*When you search the results show at the bottom of the screen

Once inside, click “Trade” tab to begin buying and selling stocks

*Students can look up tickers at http://finance.yahoo.com

  

Obviously there are many ways to approach this including levels of engagement.  Below are the 7 rules of Wall St. according to Sam Stovall. 

Table of contents from 7 Rules of Wall st.  by Sam Stovall
*it should be noted that Stovall is the Chief Investment Strategist at Standard & Poor’s which I believe is a division of McGraw Hill.  This is his latest book.  I’m not sure that it is still in print, copies of his older books which are not in print fetch hundreds of dollars per copy.  I read this book in 2 days; it’s not very difficult. 

The textbook Financial Algebra’s 1^st chapter will be a pretty big help in interpreting stock data as well as some basic analysis such as smoothing techniques (simple moving average).   Some concepts that might be explored by students could include the following: 

Momentum (let your winners ride)

Value (apply p/e ratio, rank a set of stocks by price/forecasted earnings)

Sector Rotation (work by Sam Stovall, but has a wealth of knowledge on the internet. 

See:  10 Basic Sectors:  http://biz.yahoo.com/p/s_conameu.html

And Industries of the Sectors:  http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/ind_index.html

Dogs of Wall St [or the DJI] –buy low sell high

ETFs—there is a wealth of information about investing in ETFs (electronically traded funds).  There are over 5,000 ETFs that do everything from duplicate Stovall’s indicies to follow metals, producers, specific sectors.  Some of them are leveraged so they move wildly up and down.  Others minimize trading expenses (which are taken from the gains). 

Rebalancing—a very important but boring trading topic for retirement planning.  See anything by Jack Brennan or Bogle’s earlier work.  It’s the idea that you hold more bonds earlier in your life but gradually work to a heavy ‘income’ based portfolio as you reach retirement. 

Mutual Funds—another very important topic for retirement planning.  Every mutual fund has a ticker which can be tracked on finance.yahoo.com.  Students can explore the prospectus of these funds to compare expense ratios etc.  *note that mutual funds are closed at the end of the day so they do not change value as frequently as regular stocks.  This may also become a factor for your afternoon classes because the markets close early by west coast standards. 

Types of assets and rebalancing—an important topic to think about, linked to rebalancing the main assets are cash, equities and income. 

Currency

Commodities

At the conclusions most students will find that its best left up to the professionals and the market is hard to beat. 

Make a regression and copy/paste it into a graph on the Casio

Above is a slide from section 4.3 Loan Calculations and Regressions of the Financial Algebra textbook.  The numbers are from a workbook problem set.  It gave me the opportunity to work on the parent functions, talk about concave up vs concave down, curves vs. lines.  This activity charts a 20 year loan by the year.  They used the trace function and dual screen mode to pick out specific points between the given data points using the regression in dual screen mode.

Steps for making the regression:
1.  From the [menu] select stats.  In the stats menu, enter your data.

2.  Setup your graph--I wanted a scatter plot where List1=x and List2=y.  x is years, y is loan balance. We do this by pressing [f1] (graph) then [f6] set.  As you can see in the 3rd screenshot, it is set to scatter, L1, L2.  [exit] takes you back to your data set.  

3.  Now press [f1] for Graph #1 and  you see your scatter plot.  [f1] calc gives you the option to make a regression.  [f4] x^2 for quadratic.  It displays the quadratic shown above.  From here we can have the calculator automatically input the regression into the graphing application.  To do this we press [f5] copy.  It shows the list of equations, you scroll to which equation you want it to paste into and press [exe].  It goes back to the QuadReg screen, the equation has been placed in your graphing application.

4.  To access the new graph, [menu] shows an option for Graph.  Inside of there, make sure that your new equation is selected.  To do this, hover over it and press [f1] for select.  You can see it highlight the equal sign.  It should auto-fit the window but if not, you can press [shift][f3v-win] for window settings.  [exit] takes you back to the graphing, [f6] draw allows you to see it on the screen.

[f1] will allow you to trace.  If you wish, you can activate dual-screen mode by going into setup [shift][menu] and the third option says 'dual screen', [f2] g to t will give you a dual screen where by tracing [f1] and pressing [exe] twice adds values from the tracing to a table while still showing the graph.

*remember, that if the calculator is in 'dual screen' mode it cannot graph inequalities so it will need changed back through the same procedure.

As this semester continues and we explore more parent functions, I intend to work Dynamic Graphing into class and will post a how-to for that as well.

How to do monthly payment formula on Casio Fx-series

Monthly Payment formula is a tough calculation to do without math-type calculators.  In the old school this is how we had to do it:
Step 1

Step 2 (I couldn't include all of the calculations in one screen on the calculator)

[notice that the estimate is about 12 cents off.  This is because the irrational following the first exponential calculation was estimated to the nearest ten thousanth]

ENOUGH of this long OLD method for doing this.  

Introducting:  TVM Solver, standard on Casio Graphics (called Financial on newer models)

From the Menu, select TVM:  

Within the TVM Solver, we are using 'compound interest' which corresponds to [F2]

The shown values correspond to the given example visible in the earlier pictures.  Notice that I have keyed 12*4 into 'n'.  Casios have embedded calculating so students do not have to put 48 into this field, the calculator knows what 12*4 is.  Remember, this is a complete solver so you can solve for any of the variables given all of the other inputs.  This helps me work around logarithms associated with this relation of these numbers.  By inputting all other things, they can figure out what time horizon must be met in order for a loan payment to fit within a budget given an interest rate.  They can hypothesize about what happens when they adjust basis points for using automated bill-pay etc.  The way that they solve for these different variables is by selecting the one that they want from what is known as a 'soft menu' across the bottom, the f-keys correspond to the variables across the bottom of the screen.  

In this case we want to know the monthly payment given these conditions so we press [F4] 

Notice that I entered the principal as a negative.  If you don't do that then the payment shows as a negative.  This is part of the logic within this relation that if left alone would cause errors.  However, as you can see, monthly payment formula goes from a nasty calculation to an obstacle students can easily get over in order to get thinking critically about the meaning of these calculations.  

I followed this specific example up with a set of questions regarding the total interest paid, and different scenarios about how 'Mark' would do with a better interest rate, a cheaper car and a different time horizon.  To follow up with these, press [F1] to repeat, changing other conditions.  

Using D2SC (PCG) for Exams & Promethean ActivExpressions "no registered devices"

I came across this problem twice this year and was able to work around it:

It arises as you begin to have your students take their final exam.  You had a feeling of relief that you were able to avoid printing preslugs and the waiting in line to scan them after school that follows.  But that feeling comes out of you with a "whoomph" sound when your speakers ding and an alert says "This class contains x# students and you have 0 registered devices".  You quickly fill with white terror as your blood mix changes, your eyes dilate and your clothes become uncomfortable (see Hulking Out)...like when the power went out at the 2013 Superbowl.

Relax!  Here's the fix:

1st:  The problem:

The solution (as I e-mailed it to my colleagues):  

Make a Median Box (Box & Whisker in Arizona) or Normal Distribution on Nspire CX

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Math Technology!

OK, so I gotta get this blog going. Wednesday I met with my team. Thursday I met virtually with the Texas Instrument people. I'll post the link for the next virtual meeting (Oct. 24th I believe). We talked about using Nspires to quiz. It's pretty neat, you can have Algebra students show their work within the .tns file. As for the meeting with my team, the results were that I have a lot of work to do. As soon as I figure out how to post files on this blog I will start with a scatter-plot template for the Nspire.