3 Aims The aim of this section is to help you to think about how you study mathematics and consider ways in which you can make your study more effective.
Pressing onwards Work through Sections 1.6 and 1.7 of the Calculator Book, using the method suggested above of glancing ahead-pressing on-glancing back, if you find it useful. A num 1.1 Mathematics and you Many people's ideas about what mathematics actually is are based upon their early experiences at school. The first two activities aim to help you recall formative experiences from childhood. Read Introduction Many problems are best studied by working with real functions, and the properties of real functions are often revealed most clearly by their graphs. Learning to sketch such graphs is therefore a useful skill, even though computer packages can now perform the task. Computers can plot many more points than can be plotted by hand, but simply ‘joining up the dots’ can sometimes give a misleading picture, so an understanding of how such graphs may be obtained remains important. The object of t 4 Open Mark quiz Now try the quiz and see if there are any areas you need to work on. 3.1 Expressing numbers in scientific notation Earlier you looked at place values for numbers, and why they were called powers of ten. 3.2 Negative coordinates Up to now only those points with positive or zero coordinates have been considered. But the system can be made to cope with points involving negative coordinates, such as (−2, 3) or (−2, −3). Just as a number line can be extended to deal with negative numbers, the x-axis and y-axis can be extended to deal with negative coordinates. 3.1 Positive coordinates For many towns and cities, an individual book of street maps called an A to Z has been produced. You can look up the name of a street in the index, and it will give you the page number of the map that contains the street, plus the grid reference square for the street. There are different conventions for these grid references. You may have met several of these. 2.2 Tables and percentages Tables often give information in percentages. The table below indicates how the size of households in Great Britain changed over a period of nearly 30 years. 1 Modelling static problems The main teaching text of this unit is provided in the workbook below. The answers to the exercises that you'll find throughout the workbook are given in the answer book. You can access it by clicking on the link under the workbook. Once you have completed the workbook and exercises return to this page and watch the video below, ‘The arch never sleeps’, which discusses a practical application of some of the ideas in workbook. Click 'View document' to open the workbook (PDF, 0.8 Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. All materials included in this unit are derived from content originated at the Open University. 1 Using vectors to model The main teaching text of this unit is provided in the workbook below. The answers to the exercises that you'll find throughout the workbook are given in the answer book. You can access it by clicking on the link under the workbook. Click 'View document' to open the workbook (PDF, 1 MB). 1.1 Experiences of learning mathematics You will come to this unit with many memories of mathematics, both as a teacher and a learner. It may help if you start by recalling memories of learning mathematics and making a record of them in your notebook. When you work on a task, get into the habit of having your notebook to hand to record your thinking. Use the notebook in any way that helps you to think about the work you have done. Some people find it helpful to divide a page into two columns using the left-hand side to record 1.5.9 Plagiarism Referencing is not only useful as a way of sharing information, but also as a means of ensuring that due credit is given to other people’s work. In the electronic information age, it is easy to copy and paste from journal articles and web pages into your own work. But if you do use someone else’s work, you should acknowledge the source by giving a correct reference. Taking someone's work and not indicating where you took it from is termed plagiarism and is regarded as an infringemen 1.5.8 Bibliographic software If you are considering taking your studies further you might like to consider using bibliographic software. Bibliographic software can be used to sort references, annotate them, manage quotations or create reading lists. There are several software packages on the market. Some are listed below. BibTex EndNote Procite Reference Manager RefWorks If you are not sure 1.5.6 Copyright – what you need to know An original piece of work, whether it is text, music, pictures, sound recordings, web pages, etc., is protected by copyright law and may often have an accompanying symbol (©) and/or legal statement. In the UK it is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 which regulates this. In most circumstances, works protected by copyright can be used in whole or in part only with the permission of the owner. In some cases this permission results in a fee. However, the UK legislation incl 1.5.5 Social bookmarks If you find you have a long unmanageable list of favourites/bookmarks you might like to try social bookmarks as an alternative. Read 7 things you should know about soci 4.2 Carbon reduction targets Let's now look at carbon footprint reduction targets in a bit more detail. The first international agreement to set carbon reduction targets was the 1997 United Nations Kyoto Protocol, which requires developed countries to reduce their human-generated greenhouse gas emissions by an average of just over 5% on 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. By the time the treaty came into force in 2005, only the USA and Australia had refused to sign. (A new Australian government finally signe References 2.6.2 The role of modelling studies State-of-the-art models are designed to simulate the workings of the climate system (in so far as this is currently understood), and include the ‘internal’ interactions that generate short-term natural variability in the real world. They provide modellers with a means of carrying out ‘virtual’ experiments on the climate system. In the present context, an important aim of these experiments is to identify the ‘signal’ of a human influence on climate, so studies typically involve ‘
Activity 15
Activity 1 Carl Jung's school days
Place value 10 000 1000 100 10 1 Author(s):
Author(s):
Number of people in household 1961 (%) 1971 (%) 1981 (%) 1991 (%) 1<
Activity – what you need to know about social bookmarks
