If the world were a village of 100 people...

We are looking at "How We Organise Ourselves" - our transdisciplinary theme for an inquiry into our central idea: "The global marketplace and the distribution of resources impacts individuals and communities in different ways."

There are plenty of facts and figures out there to consider using the idea of the world's population being scaled down to 100 people. This was a great opportunity for us to use some of our maths skills to represent this data.

We looked at a few examples to "tune in" our thinking. Here are some of them:

 

And then we had a go at doing some of our own.

Here is what we got...

33 of the people in the village would believe in ghosts, aliens, witchcraft etc - how many of them would be 12 year old boys?

A great picture to show the distribution of males and females - and yes, we know the male and female signs are the wrong way round.

Unfortunate student with a broken arm was unable to draw a picture or graphic so he used a computer instead. I wonder how many of the 100 people in the village would have broken arms?

Only 77 of the people in the village would have shelter.




































A great picture to show the access people have to clean water.


This was a really successful activity. It combined our knowledge of percentages in creative ways with our unit of inquiry. And it was fun.


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PS - We had considerable discussion about whether it should say, "If the world were..." or "If the world was...." You will notice that the kids have written the later. Apparently this is incorrect. According to the Future Unreal Condition tense (Form 2) it should be written "If the world were..."
http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/futureconditional.html 

10% Off $748?

I was buying a new laptop for my daughter

 

It's her birthday and she had asked for a new laptop. I was very keen - it meant I could repossess mine that she had been using for school work.

So I'd been looking around for a few weeks and identified the one that we were happy with.

I went off to do the purchase and found the model we wanted reduced from $798 to $748. 

Joy!

On finding the shop assistant. I asked him if I could purchase the said computer and he headed out to the storeroom to locate it. 

After a 10 minute delay, he came back and said the display model was the last one left but I could have it for a further 10% off.

Deep joy!

So we packed up the display model and headed for the checkout.

This is where the fun started.

So, what's 10% off $748?

Being unable to work this one out for himself, the young salesperson turned to the girl at the next register. They put their heads together and pulled out a calculator and a folder with instructions on how to work out a discounted price.

I was about to say, "It's $74.80 so the new price is $673.20." but I held my tongue to let them do the calculation.

"I'm not too good at this. I should have listened more in maths class," the young man said apologetically as he produced the final total.

Yep - the calculator agreed - 748 divided by 10 was indeed 74.8.

Relieved, the salesman rang up the new price on the till - $1496.

I pointed out that this was not quite correct and he made a few adjustments and said, "Oops - it should be $673.20."

As I was about to pay this amount, he stopped suddenly and said, "Hang on, now I need to take 10% off that, don't I?"

Probably could have got my daughter a $798 laptop for $605.88.