Presenter
David Chandler writes:
I currently teach at Eleanor Roosevelt Community Learning Center, a California public charter school that supports homeschooling families. I have addressed the issue of homeschooling parents trying to teach high school math by recording the entire Alg I and Alg II courses (following the classic Foerster textbooks and using a screen capture video process), and also created a set of supplementary materials for the wonderful text, //Geometry: A Guided Inquiry// (by Chakarian, Crabill, and Stein) built largely around The Geometer's Sketchpad. See my website, http://www.mathwithoutborders.com for samples of the videos and course descriptions.
Allison Krasnow writes:
I currently teach Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1 and Geometry at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, CA. Over the past 12 years I have taught math from 4th grade through geometry and spent many of those years as a Spanish bilingual teacher. My current classroom interests are on developing Algebra 1 and Geometry curriuculum using GeoGebra.
About the project
π is a mystery to students when it is first introduced. (For many it remains a dreaded mystery.) It is typically the first irrational number encountered in the school curriculum. It is a number you can't really write down...only approximate. It is represented with an unfamiliar Greek letter, adding more mystery than clarity.
π is 3.14, but not really. π is 22/7, but not really. You can memorize it to 50 places or more, but it's still not really π. (Where do all those digits come from, anyway? Who can measure that accurately?) Yet π has a simple and exact definition. Archimedes used the definition and an ingenious "iterative" method (a method based on successive approximations) to derive the value of π without using measurement, and thus without the limited precision of measuring instruments.
During this event, David Chandler will introduce the meaning of π, the "magic number for circles", as he does in his classes. Then, following in the footsteps of Archimedes, he will show us how we can calculate π for ourselves, to as many digits of precision as our calculating devices will allow. (Once you can find the number for yourself, it's yours.) We will use a spreadsheet. Remember, Archimedes did it all by hand, and he didn't even have decimal fractions to work with!
The only prerequisite knowledge to be able to follow the derivation is the Pythagorean Theorem. Since this presentation is open to the world and a mixed group of teachers, homeschooling parents, and students are being invited, here is a brief introduction to
the Pythagorean Theorem: how to use it, and several very graphic ways it can be proved.
