Our previous unit in math was all about polynomials and like terms. Above is my unit start/end mind map. Everything in red is what I learned by the end of this project. Anyways I know the words polynomial and like terms sound like big confusing words but the concepts are actually very simple. Basically if there are some variables and exponents that match each other in an equstion you add the coefficients together. This probably sounds confusing it was to me too, but after we did lots of lessons on a worksheet I got the hang of it.

Once we understood how the math worked it was time to start the project. Now this project was diffferent form most because we could basically do whatever we want. There just had to be some form of presentation for the class at the end. My partner was Sam and we made a product called the stat-o-matic, made an infomercial for it, and did a short explanation of how it worked in person.

The Stat-O-Matic is basically a sheet for keeping track of abseball stats on. As you watch a baseball game you tally how much of each type of hit or strikeout the players get and at the end, with combined like terms, you can add it all together and find out which team did better or how a team did compared to their other games. For this project like everyone we had to show our learning in the core competencies.

– Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas of personal interests

Sam and I connected the concept of combining like terms to something we both like. I have played baseball my whole life and just love the sports, and Sam likes baseball as well. I’ve never been able to understand how they do the real baseball stats so being able to make my own that I could actually get was super cool for me.

– Visualize to explore mathematical concepts

I believe we showed the correct mathematical operations on our sheet. Whenever you used the sheet you were constantly combining the like terms by tallying certain hits in their section. We also included strikeouts to be a negative number and showed what that looked like as well in the final polynomial section at the bottom of the sheet.

– Communicate mathematical thinking in many ways

Personally I think this was one of the areas were we lacked a little. We definitely showed how think mathematically helps with baseball stats but we didn’t really show it in any other way. To improve on this in the future we will make sure to understand what everything in the rubric says.

In conclusion I’m very proud of what Sam and I accomplished and I believe we did put some of our best work into it. Some things to work on in the future is a more prepared presentation and using better vocabulary when speaking about the math.