"Oh man, I really don't want to go to Algebra class", Jimmy complained.
"Yeah, bro. I get annoyed too. I just lack the mental capacity and patience to understand what is happening in that class" retorted Alicia.
"I agree. Let's just attend this class. We need to pass this course", Jimmy dejectedly succumbed.
"Welcome to class. In the year 2020, numerous countries in the world experienced a lockdown and shutdown", the Algebra teacher, Mr. James, introduced the class. "Does anyone know what happened?"
"Yeah, I know. The Corona Virus happened and many people died", Jimmy responded in an excited tone.
"That is accurate", Mr. James went on. "The virus proliferated at an exponential rate, such that most hospitals were not able to keep up with the influx of patients. This is one of the graphs that the Mayor of New York, Mr. Andrew Cuomo, used in one of his Coronavirus briefings. Wait, he used a math graph to talk about the virus and its spread." To everyone's surprise, the entire class remained silent and listened profoundly.
Use March 22, as x=0, and the information relayed by Governor Cuomo to predict the number of cases beyond March 22.
"Let me show you another graph from the New York Times", Mr. James went on.
Mr. James finally stated, "Use the graph above to solve this question. Take Mar 21, as x = 0 and complete the table below. Use your values to find the equation to predict the number of cases after a certain number of days?"
A little later, Alicia and Jimmy wrote a social media post, "Globally, we see a carping attitude among many Algebra students and sadly most students do not find relevance in math. Students do not how to connect math to their surroundings, so they stop exploring the aesthetics of math. The students fail to observe math's ubiquitous applications. This leads to a lack of interest and their cantankerous arguments with the teacher, "When am I ever going to use this?" Today in Algebra class, we learned how exponential functions could be used to find the number of cases related to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and it was impressive".
Find more details here:
Oxford Mathematics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Hr69JH_wA
Geometric Sequence - A small snippet from the movie 'Pay it Forward'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Xnlc2GLfY
New York Times Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/learning/7-ways-to-explore-the-math-of-the-coronavirus-using-the-new-york-times.html
Math Podcast
https://player.fm/series/the-numberphile-podcast/crystal-balls-and-coronavirus-with-hannah-fry
"Yeah, bro. I get annoyed too. I just lack the mental capacity and patience to understand what is happening in that class" retorted Alicia.
"I agree. Let's just attend this class. We need to pass this course", Jimmy dejectedly succumbed.
"Welcome to class. In the year 2020, numerous countries in the world experienced a lockdown and shutdown", the Algebra teacher, Mr. James, introduced the class. "Does anyone know what happened?"
"Yeah, I know. The Corona Virus happened and many people died", Jimmy responded in an excited tone.
"That is accurate", Mr. James went on. "The virus proliferated at an exponential rate, such that most hospitals were not able to keep up with the influx of patients. This is one of the graphs that the Mayor of New York, Mr. Andrew Cuomo, used in one of his Coronavirus briefings. Wait, he used a math graph to talk about the virus and its spread." To everyone's surprise, the entire class remained silent and listened profoundly.
 |
| Governor Cuomo Press Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgDSYXZe90 Source: Bloomberg |
Use the table above to find the exponential equation for the data.
"Let me show you another graph from the New York Times", Mr. James went on.
 |
| Source: The New York Times |
|
Day |
Mar 21 |
Mar 24 |
Mar 27 |
Mar 31 |
Apr 4 |
|
x |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
y |
343 |
|
|
|
|
A little later, Alicia and Jimmy wrote a social media post, "Globally, we see a carping attitude among many Algebra students and sadly most students do not find relevance in math. Students do not how to connect math to their surroundings, so they stop exploring the aesthetics of math. The students fail to observe math's ubiquitous applications. This leads to a lack of interest and their cantankerous arguments with the teacher, "When am I ever going to use this?" Today in Algebra class, we learned how exponential functions could be used to find the number of cases related to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and it was impressive".
Find more details here:
Oxford Mathematics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Hr69JH_wA
Geometric Sequence - A small snippet from the movie 'Pay it Forward'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7Xnlc2GLfY
New York Times Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/learning/7-ways-to-explore-the-math-of-the-coronavirus-using-the-new-york-times.html
Math Podcast
https://player.fm/series/the-numberphile-podcast/crystal-balls-and-coronavirus-with-hannah-fry