Calculation is a skill level that widely varies it is used in everyday life, for example: calculating the cost of all your groceries, and it is used in rocket science. Whatever level I plan to use it at, it is an important skill. This skill was enhanced in this class because it strengthened my ability to perform statistical calculations as well as trigonometry. I will provide three example of of how I use my ability to make calculations
The first example is the “tree measurement assignment.” in this assignment our class was put into groups of three or four and given a map of the location of three specific trees on campus. We were to find the locations of all three of the trees and make two measurements. We had to find the angle of the the tree from a specific distance and measure that distance from the spot where the angle measurement was made to the tree. We took these measurements and used them to make a triangle. We had the distance of one side of the triangle and two angles one was a 90 degree angle because the tree is growing straight up from the ground and the other angle was the the one we measured with our phones. We used trigonometry and our phones to solve for the height of the tree making sure that our calculators were in degrees not radians. This was a refreshing exercise because it has been years since I had taken any trigonometry
http://mikey.ourdigitalplanet.net/tree-measurements-assignment/
The second example is the “ map and scale reasoning” assignment. The type of math done in this assignment was conversions with ratios. We had three different scaled maps and had to measure the distance from Main Street in Chico to the railroad tracks. Each map had a ratio on it that looked something like this, 1:100,000 (cm). This means that one centimeter on the map represents 100,000 centimeters of actual land. If we measured 3.5 centimeters on the map, we had to take that measurement and convert it using the ratio. This would be 350,000 centimeters. We then had to convert this amount into feet. We had to perform these calculations for all of the three maps as well as calculate the error at 1/16 of an inch. We did this just to see how far we would be off if if our measurement was off by even a sixteenth of an inch.
http://mikey.ourdigitalplanet.net/map-and-scale-reasoning/
The final example is “the bus story” assignment in this assignment we estimated the amount of time we thought it would take the bus to complete it’s route and end in the same place as it started. Before we got on the bus we had to figure out how to calculate the amount of time without any help on how to do so. Then after we had we had completed the bus route, and knew the correct answer, our professors showed us how to calculate an estimate of the time as accurate as possible. We found that to calculate the time it would take we first needed to find the total distance the bus was traveling. After that we needed to estimate the average speed that the bus would be driving at, this was the speed limit in town, though it would be a bit slower because there are many times where the bus has to wait a bit and speed up and slow down. We use these two factors to solve for time.
http://novum-orbis.ourdigitalplanet.net/81-2/