Redistricting can be mathematical

Here's an article about redistricting :
MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS OF GERRYMANDERING (p. 3) by Paul Kehle.

 ...some of the interesting questions and issues that arise, capture student attention in ways that, while thoroughly mathematical, have little to do with gerrymandering. The topic is a rich and generative one completely apart from the initial thorny issue of deciding when a district map has gone beyond what is considered fair. In the explorations below and in working with students there are no boundaries to the questions worth exploring; and you and your students will likely come up with many not considered here, some even lead to questions at the frontier of mathematics and computing research. 

...In the simplified geographically square state represented by Vote Scenario 5a, there are 25 blocks, and each block gets one vote. The constitutionally required ratio of representatives to blocks in this country is 1:5 and so the 25 blocks must be partitioned into five congressional districts of 5 blocks each. In addition to other simplifications we make in this model, we assume there are only two political parties, the Green Party and the Purple Party. In the map, green and purple indicate how each block tends to vote. Another simplification in our model is a rule that we impose on the shape of the districts. To be a legal district, each block in the district must share at least one edge border with another block belonging to the same district. Even in such a simple model, students can gain familiarity with the general principles underlying the model and with the heart of the gerrymandering issue by calculating how many districts each party wins in District Map #1 and District Map #2. To win a district, we will assume that the party needs to win at least three of its five blocks.

In Iowa, a school let students create Arcade Games for projects, which involved math in planning the blueprints, slope, and business pricing, etc.

Creating rollercoaster rides could be duplicated with software, and is a long-awaited dream of mine:
http://www.ottumwacourier.com/news/student-arcade-rewards-concept-development/article_fbbc2d3a-ce63-11e8-ae59-5f40d19c4043.html

The Value of Video Games in the Classroom - Dan Meyer

In a recent post by teacher Dan Meyer (also mentioned in my last blog), he decided to find out why his students liked video games so much, by playing a lot of them! Here are some of his conclusions:

Video Games & Making Math More Like Things Students Like

December 16th, 2014 by Dan Meyer

These are the six lessons I learned:

1. Video games get to the point.
2. The real world is overrated.
3. Video games have an open middle.
4. The middle grows more challenging and more interesting at the same time.
5. Instruction is visual, embedded in practice, and only as needed.
6. Video games lower the cost of failure.

Turn Bland Math Problems into Interactive Classrooms, with Multimedia

Math teacher Dan Meyer has an interesting TED Talk, where he begins by saying he's talking about a subject he loves to a captive audience of students who hate it, but are required to take the course (often remedial learners).

Eventually, he leads into a line problem in the familiar format,

• deletes the information, and
• instead runs a video of filling a large tank with water.
  

After several boring minutes, the curious students ask how long it will take to fill (the exact math problem), and are led into a highly interactive, enthusiastic search for the answer -- eventually solved by viewing the last frame in the film. Meanwhile, the students take guesses, which are placed on the board, and find out if they're right!

1. Dan Meyer cuts down the information presented. Students generate it and filter out what's needed and not.
2. He leads them into formulating the problem (as Einstein and Herb Simon have mentioned is one of the major parts of solving any problem).

   The real world of human decisions is not a world of ideal gases, frictionless planes, or vacuums. To bring it within the scope of human thinking powers, we must simplify our problem formulations drastically, even leaving out much or most of what is potentially relevant...problem solving and decision making is centrally concerned with how people cut problems down to size - Herb Simon

3. Dan Meyer recommends the use of multimedia -- plentiful these days!
4. He turns the problem into a story.

Here's the link to the 11-minute talk: Dan Meyer's TED Talk: Math Class Needs a Makeover

Black MIDIs

There are now MIDI files that are so big, the music can't be played.

MIDI is a standardized way that digital sources (computers, electronic keyboards, digitized musical scores, musical instruments/voice speaking through a digital controller, or other MIDIs, etc.) can create music through a synthesizer, without musicians playing any instruments, although MIDI-controlled electronic music can be mixed together with living musicians.

Here's a link to a post about black MIDIs, where the notes grow so thick, it creates a black visual pattern or dense cloud on the screen! Sometimes it is composed of Millions of notes!  Composers may try to surpass each other in ways that don't have much to do with music!

1. Maximizing the size of the download (such as creating a terabyte file - a billion billions) or
2. Boasting about the fact that their computers are so grand that they are able to play the huge file they created!

Follow this link to try Jingle Bells and the descriptive video at the top:

Black MIDI Songs will kill your brain and your computer (Well, it's not actually that bad!)
http://m.aux.tv/news/62071-black-midi-songs-will-kill-your-brain-and-your-computer

What's the Scarcest Resource?

Surprisingly, the famous software/hardware designer and author, Dr. Fred Brooks, says that what holds up projects usually isn't money....

Brooks: The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing. 

from a 2010 Wired Magazine article:    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_fred_brooks/

He is called "the father of the IBM 360" (a major leap forward in computer hardware)

and author of The Mythical Man-Month:

You can’t accelerate a nine-month pregnancy by hiring nine pregnant women for a month. Likewise, says University of North Carolina computer scientist Fred Brooks, you can’t always speed up an overdue software project by adding more programmers; beyond a certain point, doing so increases delays.  

Mobile Pocket Projectors

This describes a mobile Pocket Projector, created by the head of the MIT Media Lab, Ramesh Raskar. I'm adding this here because it would be useful for a mobile Landmarks game.  Once the student/gamer finds the right location, several fake RFID tags could be posted in different directions, seen from the same spot or street intersection.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/pocket.html

This could be used to register whether the student/gamer had arrived at the right spot to see the landmark or view.  Also, they should take a picture of what they see and the software should be able to compare whether it's the same view, within a certain amount of leeway ("tolerance").  Using RFID tags posted on lampoles, etc. would pin down someone's success or failure quicker, because image recognition by computer software is still tricky.