ELEMENTARY MATH SELECTED TOPICS

ROUTINE TASK (PART 7.2)

Lecturer: Mangaratua Marianus Simanjorang M.Pd., Ph.D

BY:

GROUP 2 - MESP 2019

FITRI AULIA (4192411015)

ROYANA CHAIRANI (4191111010)

DAHLIA OKTAVIANI GINTING (4193312002)

DINDA APRIANI HIA (4193312003)

BILINGUAL MATHEMATICS EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF MATHEMATICS AND NATURAL SCIENCE

MEDAN STATE UNIVERSITY

2021
Teaching Question

1. After building and leveling off stacks of cubes and doing paper-and-pencil
computations to determine the arithmetic mean of a set of numbers, one of your
students tells you that he still does not understand what the mean “really” represents.
Devise two examples that you believe will help this student understand the concept of
mean.
Answer:
Meaningful understanding of numbers is linked to the second recommendation
relevant to this study, that the development of number sense be made a priority for
mathematics teaching. Number sense is regarded by many as an important goal of
mathematics education, enabling students to answer flexibly non-routine questions
that require a mathematical solution. Traditionally, mathematics was taught so that
students could answer routine arithmetic questions accurately, for future employment
in retail or manufacturing jobs. Today there is a greater need for adults who can think
mathematically and who can devise methods of solving numerical questions in novel
ways.
First. apply the mean concept in the daily life.
Example: Mother has 10 marbels for 2 of her children. She Will devide that marbels
honestly. So 10/2 is 5. Every person Will get 5 marbels, the mean is 5.

2. When asked to find the mean of the numbers 17,43,22,and 38, Ainsley turned in the
computations illustrated below to show the mean was 30. Explain her method and
illustrate it to find the mean of a set of different numbers.

Answer :
The problem is in addition to testing the students’ understanding of the mean
concepts and also for testing student pedagogies. In addition, the problem wants to
show the mean concept as a fair share context.
After the data has been obtained, the authors analyze the types of student
work. From the analysis, obtained three level of answers. The three types of answers
are further described in the next section.
 The students’ work on the mean problem given in outline can be divided into
three categories, described as follows :
Fail in Understanding the Problem
Polya split the steps in solving the problem into four steps, such as
understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back.
By using these Polya steps, it can be said that most students make mistakes
in the first step, i.e. understand the problem.
Most students make mistakes when reading the numbers on the table.
They assume all numbers are numbers to be searched for. So, they tend to
add up all the numbers, then divide by 20, that is, the number of these
values. Answers in this category are represented by student 1:

The answer illustrates how students have not understood the problem as a
whole. They have not analyzed in depth what relationship between the
first, second, third, fourth, and fifth rows in the table. They are still fixated
on the numbers that appear, and immediately assume that all of these
numbers are numbers to be determined by the mean.
Success in Looking Pattern, Fail in Interpreting Method
The second category is the category where students are able to find
patterns in the method of determining the mean, but they cannot interpret
the method. This category is represented by the following 2 student work.

The student’s answer gives insight that they can already see the
method of determining the mean in depth, i.e. by looking at the pattern of
each of the steps taken, but they are still not able to interpret the method.
 In the answer, it has been shown that each row has the same mean, but
it has not been shown how the relationship between rows. In other words,
the student looks at each line separately. He has not explained the
relationship of the numbers in each line
Success in Interpreting the Method
The third category is the category where the student can explain the steps
or procedure of the method of determining the mean. The answers in this
category are represented by the following 3 student responses.

From the answer, it can be seen that the student has explained the method
used in detail. He has been able to find relationships between rows in the
given steps. And the steps are rewritten in detail in order to be used to
determine the mean in different cases.

3. Assume that you are teaching a middle school class and the method in the school text
for finding the mean of two numbers is to add Two numbers and divide by 2. Suppose
one of your students discovered the following method for finding the mean of two
numbers and wanted to know if it would always work: subtract the smaller from the
larger, divide the difference by 2; and add the result to the smaller number. Show by
using diagrams that the text's method and the student's method both produce the
mean. Then use algebra to show that both of these methods are equivalent.
Answer :
The assumption is that there are two numbers, namely the numbers a and b. Suppose
a> b
Then:
 Finding the mean ( X́ ) with the first method (Text's Method)
 a+ b
X́ 1 =
2
 Finding the mean ( X́ ) with the second method (Student's Method)
a−b
X́ 2 = +b
2

How to prove: X́ 1 = X́ 2

a+b a−b
= +b
2 2

a+b a−b+2 b
=
2 2

a+b a+b
=
2 2

Text's Method = Student's Method Approve

Diagrams that the text's method and the student's method both produce the mean :

Score Frequency
a 1
b 1
Mean ( X́ ) a+b
2

4. The Elementary School Text example on page 473 approaches average as a leveling
off of cubes and also gives an example of data displayed in a pictograph.
a. How can the leveling of cubes techniques be used to find the mean number of
Representatives in the pictograph?
Answer:
Based on the Elementary School Text on page 473 gives an example of data
displayed in a pictograph. The leveling off cubes techniques be used to find the
mean number of representatives in the pictograph, namely:
1. Move one Tennessee representative to Kentucky and one Virginia
representative to Kentucky.
2. Then, move two Virginia representatives to South Carolina.
3. This puts 8 representative in each state.
This showing a mean number of 8 representatives.
 b. Explain how you can extend this activity if the cubes (or pictograph) cannot be
leveled evenly to the same whole number height. For example, suppose you
started with stacks of cubes with heights 8,5,6 and 11.
Answer:
If we start with stacks of cubes with height 8,5,6 and 11. Let : A = 8, B = 5, C = 6,
D = 11. Then, we can level these stacks of cubes to eventually reach a stage where
two stacks have 8 cubes and two stacks have 7 cubes, namely:
1. Move two stacks of cubes from D to B, and move one stacks of cubes from D
to C.
2. So, A = 8, B = 7, C = 7, D = 8

If the top cube on each 8 stack is cut in half and distributed, then the results is
four stacks of 7,5. So, the mean of the stacks of cubes is 7,5. That results from
equally distributing all the cubes. (Such demonstration are especially effective in
the teacher has some half-cubes available)

Classroom Connestion

1. The mean, median, and mode are called measures of central tendency and are three
different ways to use a single or “typical” number to give general information about a
data set. According to the Research statement on page 471, which of these three
measures do students tend to use regardless of the distribution of data?
Answer:

2. Read the Spotlight on Teaching at the beginning of Chapter 7 and examine the bar
graph. Write a few questions that you believe would be appropriate to ask young
children about the graph to introduce them to statistical thinking. Then, list additional
questions that would be appropriate to ask young children to help them understand the
plot shown in this spotlight.
Answer:
1. Where is the median in diagram a?
2. Is the median in diagram a the same or different from the median in diagram b?
3. How many bar charts are there in both charts?
 4. What is the smallest and largest data in diagrams a and b?

3. Read the Standards quote on page 469. Explain how the examples in Figures 7.18
and 7.20 on page 471 help to comply with the recommendations in this quote.
Answer :
The centimeter tile column in Figure 7.18a represents the height of the seven children
in centimeters by showing the top of the column above the 121-centimeter level. One
way to represent all the heights with one number is to "match" the column. If 3 tiles
are taken from each of the three tallest columns and distributed among the four
shortest columns, as shown in section b, the columns (height) are flat at 126
centimeters. Perhaps if we could see by looking at Figure 7.18 why the same result
was obtained by adding up the seven numbers
123 + 123 + 124 + 125 + 129 + 129 + 129 = 882
and dividing the sum by 7
882: 7 = 126
from there we can know how to understand what "flattens" or "balances" a data set
and that the median identifies the "middle" of the data set. They should compare the
usefulness of the mean and median as a center measure for different data sets. And for
Figure 7.20 We have seen from the earthquake data that the mean is not always a
representative center number. The next type of central number can also be informative
and is illustrated in Figure 7.20. Consider the height of the seven children shown in
Figure 7.20a by showing the top of the column above 121 centimeters in height. In
section b, these columns have been placed in increasing order. There are three
columns shorter than and three columns taller than the column at the fourth position
of section b. So, it seems reasonable to choose the height of the middle column, the
column in the fourth position (125 centimeters) as the representative height. This type
of central number, the middle number, is called the median. Note that this number
differs from the mean for this data set, which is 126 centimeters. and in Figure 7.20a
and Figure 7.20b it is also different where Figure 7.20a is not evenly ordered, while
for Figure 7.20b he diagrams from lowest to highest.
4. The one page Math Activity and the Elementary School Text page in this section
illustrate a visual method for obtaining average by “leveling off” columns. If the bars
in the bar graph in the Spotlight on Teaching at the beginning of this chapter were
leveled off, what would the leveled off bars represent? Explain how you would
interpret the leveling off of the Xs in the line on the same page.
Answer:
Based on The one page Math Activity and the Elementary School Text page in this
section illustrate a visual method for obtaining average by “leveling off” columns. If
the bars in the bar graph in the Spotlight on Teaching at the beginning of this chapter
were leveled off. Leveling the bar graph would represent the average number of
pockets for students in this particular class.
How I would interpret the leveling off of the Xs in the line on the same page :
Leveling the off the Xs in the line plot would represent average number of student per
number pockets. In other word, leveling off the Xs in the line plot by counting the
number of classmates who have various number of pockets.