Money – Jon Oaks

13 Jun

Pricing Mistakes Challenge

By Jon OaksUncategorizedActivity, Money

I challenged my students this week to find pricing mistakes. For example, mistakes such as .11¢ instead of $0.11 or 11¢. I found two of my own this week. Here they are: See the full gallery on Posterous

14 May

Scotch Tape and Gas Prices Dilemma

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Gas Prices, Geometry, Measurement, Money, Scotch Tape, Tax

So, my whole recent obsession with Scotch Tape sort of began a few weeks ago when the following problem popped into my mind... Suppose your boss wants you to buy six 1/2 in x 450 in rolls of Scotch tape at the dollar store (remember the 6% Michigan sales tax). Your boss wants you to use the tape to enclose an area of 3,225.8 square cm, but has only given you a budget of $7.00 to do so, including the amount of gas to drive back and forth to the dollar store, which is exactly 1.5 miles away from work.…

14 May

#anyqs Related ‘Stuff’

By Jon OaksUncategorizedBottles, Money, Scotch Tape, Twitter, Video

If you're not familiar with #anyqs, start here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=10120. Otherwise, enjoy.

03 Mar

Rotten Tomatoes, Linear Equations, Ratio and Proportion

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Equations, Money, Proportion, Ratio

This problem came about because I was talking about solving the equation 4x + y = - 14 for y and there was a little confusion about how I could subtract 4x from - 14. Although this was really a problem with combining like terms, I figured that now was as good of a time as ever to reinforce the idea of combining like terms. "Yaletta bought an unknown number of tomatoes at $4 each, but when she got home, she found out that all of the tomatoes were rotten. In addition, she checked her receipt and realized that the…

01 Mar

New Application Problems from the Classroom

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Geometry, Measurement, Money, Statistics

Here are few more problems that I came up with during today's class: 1. Clyde owed 8 different people $4 each for some doughnuts that he bought to eat on his birthday. Then when he wasn't looking, Hellman's stole $4 from Clyde's wallet. In order to reclaim his debt, Clyde needed to split up his total losses over a period of nine months. How much debt will he recover over each of the nine months? 2. Clyde went to the store and he bought seven nuclear weapons, but he doesn't know the price of them yet. He had to return…

24 Feb

Teaching Signed Numbers with Zombies, Ghostbusters, and Night Vision Goggles

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Fractions, Integers, Money

Here are three new application problems that I came up with while teaching signed numbers this morning. Remember, I came up with these on the spot, during class. So, just imagine that the entire class is paying attention to each of these problems as I am writing them, trying to figure out what is going to happen next to Clyde in each of the problems. I hope you enjoy these! 1. Clyde was walking down the street and he lost 1/3 of his vodka. A little later down the street Clyde encountered a zombie who wanted to steal another 2/5…