# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 230): Dean Lewis

Let $W(t)$ be the statement “It is easy to walk away at time $t$,” and let $T$ be the set of all times. Translate the logical statement

$\forall t \in T(\lnot W(t))$.

This matches part of the chorus of “Be Alright” by Dean Lewis.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Engaging students: Defining the words acute, right, and obtuse

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission again comes from my former student Jesus Alanis. His topic: how to engage geometry students when defining the words acute, right, and obtuse.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

The way you as a teacher can create an activity for defining angles is with Snowing Angles. The way you could start this lesson is by explaining that right angles are 90 degrees, acute angles are less than 90 degrees, and obtuse angles are greater than 90 degrees. Then make students get 3 different color markers to label the different types of angles. On this website, there is a worksheet that has different snowflakes. On the worksheet, you would get students to use a protractor(you are going to have to teach students how to use a protractor) to measure the angles so that students get to determine what kind of angle it is and use the marker to mark the type of angle it is.

Once students are done with the worksheet and understand the types of angles, they can start building their own snowflake. While the students get to building their snowflakes, you could ask students questions to get them thinking. Example: Is this a right angle or an acute angle? Something I would add to this project or activity would be to make sure that the students have at least one of each of the angles that were taught.

Also, this is a great project for the holidays and students get to take it home becoming a memory of what was taught in class.

https://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/12/its-snowing-angles.html

How can this topic be used in your students’ future courses in mathematics or science?

The use of angles in this lesson is for students to know about the name of angles which are acute, right, and obtuse. The importance that students need to take away is that students need to know what the degrees of the angles are. When they continue talking about angles students will realize that a straight line is 180 degrees. When given a missing angle either an acute angle or an obtuse angle you could realize that an acute angle plus an obtuse angle equals 180 degrees. Also, with 180 degrees, you could find an angle that is missing with enough information. Later with this fact, students will learn about the interior, exterior, supplementary, and commentary angles. Students will also use the knowledge of angles towards triangles and specifically right angles with using the Pythagorean Theorem. Later, trigonometry will be added to this idea. Angles would then be used for the Unit Circle.

How has this topic appeared in high culture?

• The way that angles are used in high culture is photography. Photography has become an appreciated form of art. Angles are literally everywhere. For example, if you look at the cables on bridges or the beams that hold building form angles. Also by using your camera you could use angles to take pictures a certain way whether if you want to take a straight picture of your city or it could be at an angle to make the building looks a certain way.
• Also, angles are used in cinematography. The way the camera is angled plays a major role in the film process. Cameras are angled to help the viewers feel a part of the journey that the character is experiencing. The angle helps provide the film with what the setting is like or how characters are moving in the film. The angles are there to make the experience more realistic. The angles are important because they provide the setting, the character’s storyline, or give a view of where the different character may be in the same scene. (https://wolfcrow.com/15-essential-camera-shots-angles-and-movements/)

References

• Educational, Deceptively. “It’s Snowing Angles!” Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational, Deceptively Educational, 6 Dec. 2012, deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/12/its-snowing-angles.html.
• Wolfcrow By Sareesh. “15 Essential Camera Shots, Angles and Movements.” Wolfcrow, 2017, wolfcrow.com/15-essential-camera-shots-angles-and-movements/.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 229): Mean Girls

Let $W(t)$ be the statement “$t$ is a Wednesday,” let $P(t)$ be the statement “We wear pink at time $t$,” and let $T$ be the set of all times. Translate the logical statement

$\forall t \in T(W(t) \Rightarrow P(t))$.

This matches a line from the movie “Mean Girls.”

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Engaging students: Finding the circumference of a circle

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission comes from my former student Jaeda Ransom. Her topic, from Geometry: finding the circumference of a circle.

How can technology (YouTube, Khan Academy [khanacademy.org], Vi Hart, Geometers Sketchpad, graphing calculators, etc.) be used to effectively engage students with this topic?

Games are a great way to engage students and use technology at once. This online circumference memory game is an engaging way for students to practice their circumference solving skills. Students can work by themselves or with a partner. They have to find the circumference of different circles, 6 to be exact, and then play a memory matching game. The game is cute and adds a little fun to their extra practice. The link to the game: http://www.algebra4children.com/Games/Circumference/Circumference.html

Another great tool is an online circle tool from illuminations. It is already prepped for use and only has 3 functions, an introduction screen, investigation, and practice problems. Students can work independently or with a partner to solve the problems, it also has finding the area of a circle practice problems and investigations as well. The link to the tool: https://www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Circle-Tool/

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

An activity that would be great for this topic would be a scavenger hunt. This activity involves the students to go around the school premises and find circular objects, measure the diameter or radius of the circular object and record the object, measurements, and location on their paper. Students would work in pairs and the materials needed would be a ruler, pen/ pencil, clipboard, and long piece of yarn (for students who find circular objects bigger than a ruler/ meter stick). Once the pairs have found the most circular objects with their given measurements in the 8 minutes received for the hunt, students will come back to class and do the calculations using the formula. After calculations are complete the pair with the most objects and completed calculations is the winner of the scavenger hunt. Students will then work with another pair and discuss similar objects found and compare calculations. Students will also be encouraged to discuss why their calculations might have differed or some plausible errors.

What interesting things can you say about the people who contributed to the discovery and/or the development of this topic?

Evidence of historic use of perimeter and circumference goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians at around 1800 B.C.E. But, Archimedes is credited to be the first one to formally discover pi in 240 B.C.E. Archimedes is known to be the greatest mathematician to live. Though people did not know much about his life, he was known for many things including the inventor of superweapons such as ‘death ray’ and ‘giant claw’.  Another interesting fact is that Eratosthenes was the first one to discover the circumference of the earth. The circumference of the earth was said to be found sometime between 276 and 195 B.C.E. For Eratosthenes to find the circumference of the entire earth without the resources and technology we have to date now is very impressive. Unfortunately, Eratosthenes’ method to calculate the Earth’s circumference has been lost; and what has been preserved is a simplified version by Cleomedes which helped popularize the discovery.

References:

https://ideagalaxyteacher.com/area-and-circumference-activities/

https://sciencing.com/origins-perimeter-circumference-7815683.html

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 228): Hannah Montana

Let $M(x)$ be the statement “$x$ makes mistakes,” let $D(x)$ be the statement “$x$ has those days,” and let $P$ be the set of all people. Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in P(M(x) \land D(x))$.

This matches the opening lines of “Nobody’s Perfect” by Hannah Montana.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Engaging students: Deriving the Pythagorean theorem

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission comes from my former student Gary Sin. His topic, from Geometry: deriving the Pythagorean theorem.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

The Pythagorean Theorem is an extremely important topic in mathematics that is useful even when after the students graduate high school and proceed to college. As a student majoring in mathematics, I always like to explore the fundamental proofs of different theorems; I feel that if the student is able to derive a formula or theorem; it displays mastery over a mathematical topic.

As such, I will have the students work with a geometrical proof of the theorem. The students will be given 4 triangles with sides a, b, and c, and a square with sides c. I will instruct the students to fidget with the shapes and allow them to explore the different combinations that might lead to the theorem. As the class slowly figures out what combinations work, I will provide algebraic hints to the proof of the theorem. (including $(a+b)^2$ and $c^2$).

Finally, once a majority of the students figure out the geometric proof of the theorem; I will recap and reiterate the different findings of the students and summarize the geometric proof of the theorem.

How can this topic be used in your students’ future courses in mathematics or science?

Pythagorean Theorem is extremely useful when beginning geometry, it applies to all right triangles and one could use it too to find the area of regular polgyons as they are also made up of right triangles. The surface area and volumes of pyramids, triangular prisms also rely on the theorem. Another major topic in geometry is trigonometry, where the trigonometric ratios are introduced and they are also based on right triangles. The Law of Cosines is also derived from the theorem. The theorem is also used in the distance formula between 2 points on the Cartesian plane.

The theorem is also used in Pre-Calculus and Calculus. Complex numbers uses it (similar to the distance formula). The basis of the unit circle and converting Cartesian coordinates to polar coordinates or vice versa also utilizes the theorem. The fundamental trigonometric identity is also derived from the theorem. Cross products of vectors uses the theorem, the theorem can also be seen in Calculus 3 in 3 dimensional geometry and finding volumes of various shapes because the theorem still applies to planes.

How does this topic extend what your students’ should have learned in previous courses?

The theorem uses algebra to represent unknown sides in a right triangle. The students should have also learned about the names of the different sides on a right triangle, namely the legs and the hypotenuse. Being able to identify which side is the hypotenuse is very important in understanding and applying this theorem. Additionally, the students must be able to recognize what a right angle is which will determine if a triangle is a right triangle or not.

Deriving the theorem requires knowledge on the multiplication of polynomials, and how they are factored out. The students also use powers of 2 in the theorem and should be aware of how to square 2 integers and what the product is equal to. In the case of a non Pythagorean triple, the student must be able to manipulate radicals and simplify them accordingly.

Finally, the student must be able to identify what variables are provided and know what unknown they have to solve for. The variables and unknown side requires basic knowledge on how algebra works and how to use equations and manipulate them accordingly to solve for an unknown.

# Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 227): Dr. Seuss

Let $F(x)$ be the statement “Funny things are at $x$,” and let $P$ be the set of all places. Translate the logical statement

$\forall x \in P(F(x))$.

This matches the opening line of the children’s book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

# Engaging students: Using the undefined terms of points, line and plane

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission again comes from my former student Alizee Garcia. Her topic, from Geometry: using the undefined terms of points, line and plane.

How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

There is various way I could create an activity for this topic, but I think one that would be the most successful a project for the students in which they can better understand the terms. Since all three terms are related and relatively simple to describe the project could also be an in-class activity depending on the time given. However, in this project the students would have to take pictures of real-world examples for a point, line, and plane as best as they can and describe why they chose the examples they did. It is important that when teaching geometry as well as other lessons, that real-world examples are given to help students better understand the topics. Also, students can give their best definitions of the terms as well as drawing out them. This will allow students to think about the terms mathematically and as real-world subjects too.

How has this topic appeared in pop culture (movies, TV, current music, video games, etc.)?

The use of undefined terms point, line and plane can be used in video games such as Minecraft and call of duty. Both games consist of a map of some sort with different coordinates of safe zones or just where the game will take place. In call of duty, using an aiming weapon allows for the player to find a point and from there to where they are aiming from is the line that will connect it. As well as in Minecraft, you are able to build off of other buildings as well as being able to connect the points in a certain grid in order to succeed. I think video games and technology would be the most common pop culture examples that this topic will appear in. Although there are far more video games that relate to the undefined terms of point, line, and plane, it is a good way to let students understand how geometry can be seen in the real world.