1. Motivating Mathematical Ideas Using Sitcoms and Movies
Scott Adamson, Ph.D.
Milos Podmanik

2. The Office Intro

3. Session Goals
Share ideas for motivating mathematical thinking and problem solving.
Enjoy the brilliance of the creators of The Office!
Reveal how conceptual understanding can lead to procedural fluency and proficient problem solving.
Be entertained by famous scenes from The Office!
Possibly…be challenged to dig deeper into the mathematical meaning of familiar ideas.
Laugh and have fun!

4. Season 5 Episode 12 – Prince Family Paper
No youtube version of this clip

5. What????!!!!
Simplify:
4𝑥 2
Michael Scott: Let's see if I can help. Ohhh. Oh, math! That's not so hard. Ok. You have four of these. Little girl: Right. Michael Scott: Ignore the parentheses right? Why is this little two so small? It- it's weird. You just-- don't- - you just go by the x. The x means times, so that means four times x two, what is double four? Little girl: Eight. Michael Scott: Right! Excellent. Way to go! Nice. Grandma: Oh. Don't put that...

6. Funny Song
Clever Rhyme
This formula
Tricks and Gimmicks
Another formula
That formula
Mnemonic

7. Average Rate of Change Constant Rate of Change Problem Solving
Proportional Reasoning
Real-world contexts
Arithmetic and Multiplicative Comparisons
Idea of Function
Meaning of Arithmetic Mean
Interpreting and Analyzing Graphs

8. Season 5 Episode 9 – The Surplus

9. Does Good Math Mask Understanding?
Compare the fractions: 49 48
>

10. Does Good Math Mask Understanding?
Compare the fractions:
>
>

11. Season 5 Episode 13 – Stress Relief

12. How many is that per hour?
1 minute
1 minute
60 copies of 1 minute…
60 copies of 100 beats
100 beats
100 beats
In 60 minutes or 1 hour, there are 6000 beats!

13. How many is that per second?
1 minute
100 beats
1 minute
100 beats
In 1 second there are ≈1.67 beats!

14. Season 5 Episode 13 – Stress Relief

15. Season 9 Episode 4 – Work Bus

16. Unpack the mathematical thinking/reasoning!
How much time to spare?
Pie shop closes at 5:00 pm
5:00 pm is “20 minutes from now”
Pie shop is 13 miles away
Traveling 55 MPH
Unpack the mathematical thinking/reasoning!

17. It could sound something like this…
What does 55 MPH mean?
Therefore, in it takes of an hour to travel 1 mile.
So, we need 13 copies of of an hour since the distance is 13 miles and each mile will take of an hour.
13 copies of is 13∙ 1 55 = ≈ hours

18. It could sound something like this…
13 copies of is 13∙ 1 55 = ≈ hours
There are 60 minutes in one hour and we have less than 1 hour…about hours so that is equivalent to ∙60 or about 14 minutes.
We know that the current time is 20 minutes until 5:00…and it will take 14 minutes to arrive…so there are 6 minutes to spare.
Assumptions…..

19. Season 9 Episode 4 – Work Bus

20. Take Aways
Share with a person next to you one thing you might take away from this session.

21. Math Teaching Practices
Establish mathematics goals to focus learning.
Implement tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving.
Use and connect mathematical representations.
Facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse.
Pose purposeful questions.
Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding.
Support productive struggle in learning mathematics.
Elicit and use evidence of student thinking.

22. Thank you!
@getrealmath