 Poster: A snowHead
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I'd been helping my Nephew with his additional maths over the last couple of months and struggled to find any decent resource material. His school hadn't got any text books as OCD Additional Maths is just an add on for kids who take their GCSE a year early. It's treated as like and interim module to aid transition to A level.
I searched the web and found a few OK-ish sites, nothing decent and they were all really dry and academic.
Then a few days ago -after his exam of course - I found this:
http://www.khanacademy.org/
What a fantastic resource. From elementary to undergrad level. Brilliant. And unbelievably comprehensive. And FREE.
If you know anyone who wants any maths topic explained in 10 min chunks I'd suggest that this is the best online teaching resource I've come across.
OK the guy says math instead of maths but that apart it's great.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Our school provides special puzzle club classes to stretch some of the maths students and my youngest enjoys the logic puzzles he gets there. Things like one boat which will take two women, or a man and a woman but not two men and you have to use the boat to get a party of so many men and women to an island. I am looking for an online free source of logic puzzles like that for KS2 maths, but one that doesn't require something like a google or facebook login  to access - if anyone has found any of these I'd appreciate any links to save me the time I will spend on google searching.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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... maths ...
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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People who can afford a skiing holiday by default will need to know to do sums and generate a surplus first.
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CEM, maths not math - do not care where it goes ... just hate the word math (without the s)
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Megamum, have a look for the books of Martin Gardner; there are several about puzzles and fun with mathematics.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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rayscoops, I also hate MATH. But thought I might make a little mischief with the title and see who bit first. Congrat's. 
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jzBun, woo hoo 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| jzBun wrote: |
| rayscoops, I also hate MATH. But thought I might make a little mischief with the title and see who bit first. Congrat's. |
And there was I thinking that Snowheads was a community with a forgiving culture, one that did not pick upon minor grammatical or spelling foibles.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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CEM,
| Quote: |
| well i suppose you could discuss the gradient of a piste...... |
Have a look at this. It tells you how to calculate the gradient of a 3 dimensional hill and also how to calculate, and follow, the maximum fall line.
http://www.khanacademy.org/video/gradient-1?playlist=Calculus
I didn't understand a word
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I think Math is US isn't it? They are both abbreviations of Mathematics so I can't say it bothers me.
Convert a 85% slope to degrees, and a convert a 30º slope to a percentage - then this thread will belong to the piste section.
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You know it makes sense.
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| snowball wrote: |
| I think Math is US isn't it? They are both abbreviations of Mathematics so I can't say it bothers me. |
Absolutely. Although the UK useage does seem more logical to me since the full word is Mathematics, not Mathematic. 
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Alastair Pink, Not surer why that is necessarily more logical - I would have thought only a minority of abbreviations include the last letter, though I can't think of many plurals to compare with so I might be wrong there.
However, personally I find the old British Billion, Trillion, Quadrillion etc much more logical than the US (and now unfortunately our) Billion (etc). Billion (suggesting 2) was a million squared, trillion was a million cubed, Quadrillion was a million to the power 4. There is no similar simple logic for the US words.
Last edited by Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name: on Mon 27-06-11 13:45; edited 3 times in total
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Poster: A snowHead
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I haven't logged on for a while and was amazed to see this thread, since Maths provides me with almost as much fun as skiing!!. As an ex-Maths teacher I am happy to contribute. Some good ideas already, and you can also try books by Ian Stewart, Alex Bellos & John Allen Paulos. "Chaos" by James Glieck is a classic (and he's a journalist so not too many equations!) if you want to learn more. I have a list I have compiled of over 200 Maths websites if anyone is interested, just pm me. nrich.com is good to challenge bright kids, and coolmath4kids.com is great for kids of all ages, especially lower secondary. Also http://www.cut-the-knot.com/content.shtml is full of good stuff.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| snowball wrote: |
| However, personally I find the old British Billion, Trillion, Quadrillion etc much more logical than the US (and now unfortunately our) Billion (etc). Billion (suggesting 2) was a million squared, trillion was a million cubed, Quadrillion was a million to the power 4. There is no similar simple logic for the US words. |
There's nothing British about Trillion and Quadrillion. It's used in the US just as much.
However, you should see the reaction of people's face when those words were used!
The simple fact being, once you get over a million, people simply lose sense of how big it really is any way. (well, until million became a common unit, which itself is unfortunate)
When I was in school, once we got over 3 zeros, we express in power of 10 instead of adding more zero's to the end. Much easier to read without having to count the little '0'!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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abc, I think snowball, is referring to the fact that the old British billion was 1,000,000,000,000 as opposed the US 1,000,000,000, the British trillion was 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 and so on. The US trillion is the old British billion.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| miranda wrote: |
| abc, The US trillion is the old British billion. |
Until very recently, but the cultural power of the USA won out after years of many British using the US Billion. Well, it does sound more impressive to say a billion rather than a thousand million..
One practcal problem of the word Billion is on the TV it is often not spoken very clearly and can often be mistaken for million.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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To avoid the confusion regarding different US and old British meanings of billion and trillion, I propose that we should use the world wide scientific SI unit system prefix terminology - we could then talk about GigaPounds, TeraDollars etc. 
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| Quote: |
To avoid the confusion regarding different US and old British meanings of billion and trillion, I propose that we should use the world wide scientific SI unit system prefix terminology - we could then talk about GigaPounds, TeraDollars etc.
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And to discuss most bank savings account interest rates we could use femtoPence
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| Acacia wrote: |
And to discuss most bank savings account interest rates we could use femtoPence |
Acacia, As much as that? 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| miranda wrote: |
| abc, I think snowball, is referring to the fact that the old British billion was 1,000,000,000,000 as opposed the US 1,000,000,000, the British trillion was 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 and so on. The US trillion is the old British billion. |
Sorry for not realizing that! 
So what's British for 1,000,000,000?
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| Quote: |
| So what's British for 1,000,000,000? |
Move to Non Dom Status.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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jzBun, so true...
abc, we used to call that a thousand million. As snowball, points out we have very recently adopted the US standard and started calling it a billion but before the logic was that biliion was a million x a million, trillion was a million x a million x a million and so on... which made sense. So now the old British billion (1,000,000,000,000) is being called a trillion in line with US standards.
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| miranda wrote: |
| ... we have very recently adopted the US standard and started calling it a billion... |
It's not that recent, the UK government's been using the 'US billion' since the mid seventies. £ billion is a very useful size of unit for measuring the UK economy.
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You know it makes sense.
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sloop, I think some people have different perspectives of how recent the mid seventies are
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| miranda wrote: |
| abc, we used to call that a thousand million. As snowball, points out we have very recently adopted the US standard and started calling it a billion but before the logic was that biliion was a million x a million, trillion was a million x a million x a million and so on... which made sense. So now the old British billion (1,000,000,000,000) is being called a trillion in line with US standards. |
Thanks for the explanation.
While I repsect the tradition in British unit, as a former scientist, the lack of thousand x million and thousand x billion is a bit disconcerting. In science (and engineering?), most units are by thousands. So you have the Mega and Giga and Tera etc. The missing units does feel like a pretty big hole.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| sloop wrote: |
| miranda wrote: |
| ... we have very recently adopted the US standard and started calling it a billion... |
It's not that recent, the UK government's been using the 'US billion' since the mid seventies. £ billion is a very useful size of unit for measuring the UK economy. |
My 1990 Concise Oxford Dictionary still defines a Billion as a million million and the US Billion as 1,000,000,000 - though does say that the million million version is "now less used"
My point was about the logic of the words - I agree the word for I0 to the power 9 is useful (except on TV where you can often not hear for sure which was said).
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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When we heard about trillions being lost by bankers in recent years I tried to put it in perspective. If you owe one million pounds and pay it off at a rate of 1 pound per second it would take you 11.57 days. If it is a billion pounds you would take over 31 years, and a trillion pounds would take over 31,000 years at the same rate. We could be in trouble for a long time yet!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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snowball, I wasn't even born in the mid seventies and I was still taught as a child that there was a difference between a UK billion and a US billion. I think you're right about the logic of the words.
welshskier, just don't.... 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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You ought to work in my industry, I was first a scientist, where we have parts per million (ppm) and parts per billion (ppb), then I go and for the oil industry where we have parts per million (ppm) and pounds per barrel (ppb!!), and where oil and gas gallons and barrels are usually not UK gallons and barrels, but are usually USA gallons and barrels. Def. a case of confused? I will be!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I'm remembering the time the US Mars lander crashed because some people were using metres and others feet.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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