Learning Beyond the Classroom w/ NUMB3RS

If you are not familiar with NUMB3RS, please consider learning more as this resource is phenomenal! "Spree Part 1" Friday, September 22, 10PM ET/PT on CBS While Don and his team are faced with trying to capture a 30-year-old teacher (Dickens) and her 17-year-old boyfriend/student (Gallagher), who are on a violent cross-country crime spree, one of their own gets caught in the crossfire. This is part one of a two-part, third-season premiere of NUMB3RS.

This Week's New Lesson Plans NUMB3RS Activity: The Missing City In this activity, students will examine a map of a crime spree, similar to one Charlie makes in the episode. Students will be asked to compute the mileage between the pairs of cities along the route and make a conjecture about the location of a “missing city” that Charlie thinks the criminals visited, but did not commit a crime. NUMB3RS Activity: Traveling in Good Circles In this activity, students will find the shortest great circle distance between two cities. Students will investigate and use a formula that uses the latitude and longitude of each city to find this distance. NUMB3RS Activity: The Chase In this activity, students will be introduced to pursuit curves, in the context of Agent Edgerton chasing a pair of criminals. Students will examine how Agent Edgerton's path changes as he pursues the couple. NUMB3RS Activity: The Four Bug Problem: Step on No Pets This activity also examines pursuit curves, in the context of a classic problem called the Four Bug Problem. This includes a class activity in which four students will take a walk along a pursuit curve in a simulation of this problem. To see all available activities for current and past episodes, visit cbs.com/numb3rs.

Season One Activities In the Works Due to popular demand, TI and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) have announced plans to create activities for Season One of the hit television series. The lessons will focus primarily on Algebra and Geometry fundamentals. Stay tuned for more details!

Website Refreshed The “We All Use Math Every Day” web site is back this year with a brand new look and feel. You can find the site by going to cbs.com/numb3rs. Inside the site, you'll find activities from Season Two and Three for use in the high school classroom. We'll also be testing out a few program ideas, including having some activities in Spanish. And, our parent site will be expanded as the year goes on. In particular, keep an eye on the “Insiders” section where you'll find information about the “We All Use Math Every Day” program and the people behind it. Please feel free to direct other educators to the site to download the free activities as well as sign up to receive a Teacher's Getting Started Kit which includes program information, sample classroom activities, a classroom poster and bumper sticker. In addition, educators can sign up to receive this weekly “We All Use Math Every Day” e-newsletter packed with classroom activities and exclusive insider information about the educational program.

The Inside Scoop with Andrew Black Andrew Black, math researcher for NUMB3RS, took a moment to sit down and discuss Season Three and what's in store for Charlie's math-oriented crime solving skills: We are all eagerly awaiting the return of NUMB3RS, are there any new math elements we should expect to see this season? “Charlie again applies some nifty math logic to hunting down a variety of bad guys. The two-part season premiere has Charlie helping the FBI track down two criminals on a multi-state crime spree. Charlie applies Pursuit Curves to predict the criminals' most likely path of escape – and their ultimate destination. In other episodes, the FBI enlists Charlie's help after a series of seemingly random highway attacks (resulting in several murders) grip LA. Charlie disentangles the concept of "random" in order to find a true underlying pattern, leading to the takedown of the killer. And later, Charlie helps the FBI track down a stolen work of art from an LA museum. We get into the subtle intricacies shared between math and art.” What advice would you give educators who are looking to incorporate something new in their math classrooms? “The show is just a springboard to get students to think about math in a different, real-world way. We hope Charlie's use of math will show students that math really is used everyday, that math is all around us, and that it's often used without us even being aware of it. Hopefully Charlie's applications will engage both teachers and students, expanding math beyond the textbook.”

Tags: math, teach, students, learn, school, CTE