120 Percent

Have a look at this one, as spotted by Miss Martin on her holiday in America.

Clearly 120% of the drink cannot be Vitamin C - that would be silly. What do you think the 120% does actually mean? What else could it mean?

World Maths Day

Yes, its back and bigger than ever.

All students should have their login details from tutors, and its tutor group vs tutor group and year vs year. There is team glory and individual glory to be won.

Go to www.worldmathsday.com, log in and get going.

You can also download the free apps for iPhone, iPod touch or even iPad.

Subscribe to this blog for regular updates.

My Averages Question

My maths teacher mr Smy gave me a maths question, totally made up in his head, and told me to go away and try to work it out.

Question: If I have 5 numbers with Mean=9, mode=10, median=11. What are the numbers?

= 10,10,11,?,?

And i said it won't work because....

• you cant get a higher number than 11 to make 45 because it all ready adds up to 31
• if you add 12 to that it will equal 43 then you would need a 2 and the two can't go in front of the 10 beacuase the median will change.

Luxmi 7BN

Year 9 - Sharing Petrol Costs

What is fair?

9M5 looked at this problem last week...
They looked at different ways that the costs could be shared between the students

Here are their different solutions.


Which do you think is fairest?
Are there any other answers you could suggest that you think are fairer?

QR Codes, what are they?

Do you know what a QR code is?

It's one of those 2-D barcodes you see cropping up all over the place. The QR stands for Quick Response. You may have seen this one around school...

A QR code can be a number of things.

• It can be a link to a website (like the one on the right).
• It could simply be a piece of text with some information on.
• It can write a SMS (text) on your phone, with the number to send it to already there
• It can be a mobile phone contact, ready to save.
• An iTunes link, or an Android Marketplace link.

Go and have a look at http://www.qrstuff.com/ for easy ways to create your own.

There are three main ways to read QR codes like the one above...

1. On an iPhone. Go to the App store, and search for a QR reader.
   
2. On an Android. Again, go to the App market, and search for a QR reader.
3. Using a PC and webcam. You will need software to read the codes. I recommend QuickMark (which is also available for iPhone / Android).
   

Look out; here comes the maths bit.

A QR code is a 2-dimensional array. Each pixel is either black or white. QR codes like the one above are 32 pixels by 32 pixels. How many different QR codes do you think there can be?

Mathematicians would try to make it simpler to work out (at first). What about a 4 x 4 QR code? How many do you think there would be. If you want to practice colouring some there is a blank grid here...

Be careful - even with the smaller grid there are a huge number of possible codes - think systematically.