Geometry POL Prep

Brianna Garcia

Geometry Skills
1. What have I mastered this year?
One topic I feel I have mastered would be our logic practice. This consists of conditional
statements, something that should we know should be logical but it is worded in a way that
makes no sense when you first read it. For example:
If the coffee pot is empty, then all the teachers become grumpy. True or false? True.
Negation: All the teachers become grumpy, because the coffee pot is empty. True or false? False.
Now we switch the hypothesis and conclusion: If all the teachers become grumpy, then the
coffee pot is empty. True or false? True.
One thing we had to learn was inverse, converse, contrapositive, and negation. What do all of
these mean?
The inverse is statement is arrived at by replacing the hypothesis and the conclusion with their
negations. (Negatives) if a statement reads, "If the coffee pot is empty, then all the teachers
become grumpy", then the inverse of this statement is "If the coffee pot is not empty, then all the
teachers are not grumpy." Both the hypothesis and the conclusion were negated. If the original
statement reads "if x, then y", the inverse reads, "if not x, then not y."
The converse of a statement is formed by switching the hypothesis and the conclusion. "If all the
teachers become grumpy, then the coffee pot is empty." The truth value of the converse of a
statement is not always the same as the original statement. For example, the converse of "All
bears are mammals" is "All mammals are bears." Not true. The converse of a definition, must
always be true.
The contrapositive of a statement is formed when the hypothesis and the conclusion are
interchanged, and both are replaced by their negation. If all the teachers are not grumpy, then
the coffee pot is not empty. The contrapositive is always true.
Lastly we have the negation. If all the teachers become grumpy, then the coffee pot is empty.
In logic, negation, is an operation that takes a proposition x to another proposition "not x", which
is interpreted intuitively as being true when x is false and false when x is true.

I feel that I have mastered this this topic because after practicing it enough I finally caught on. I
find some of the statements very funny, which gets me excited to learn.

2. How have Explorations help me grow as a math student?

In class we are given explorations. An in class paper, filled with different math problems
connected to the topic we are learning in class. For example we would get a paper asking us
about 10 questions, like, On a separate piece of paper graph and plot points of
y= 2x - 7, x + 2y = 16, and so on. We work with students to accomplish these problems. Many
of them are quick problems we can solve in class or at home. Some explorations can be very
hard and you sometimes need a friend or teacher to help you figure out the problem. Having in
class discussions about them help because we are all learning something we didnt understand,
together. The explorations have helped me a lot as a learner because you have to be ready to
solve a problem and use your time wisely. It really gets my brain ready for whatever we are
learning next in class.

For this exploration we were asked to answer the questions using logic and determining if they
were true or false.
3. What is the hardest math problem you have encountered this semester? Explain
how you solved it, or if you didnt, why you werent able to.
One of the hardest math problems I encountered this semester was different math equations. Ive
always had a hard time with math, especially math problems with letters. The pythagorean
theorem was one thing that boggled my mind.
For example: x2 + 14x + 45 = 0
I get easily confused with these problems, until Aliza taught us the diamond method. The
diamond method is results in two numbers (14) and (45) in our case. It consists of two factors
that are the product of A and C and have the sum of B value, same on the other side. It is a more
visual way of learning. (Shown below)

Problem-Solving Skills
My problem solving skills:
Communicating thinking in a clear and accessible way
Restate the problem in a different way that adds to our
understanding
Translate ideas using other forms or representations - language,
symbolic, visual
Respond to the ideas of others - ask clarifying questions, build on
promising ideas
Solicit contributions from quieter members of the group
Reflecting and synthesizing
Contextualize your answer and reflect on it
Provide justification for an idea or process
Develop general rules based on specific examples
Connect abstract idea to real world example

1. Which Habit of a Mathematician do I have the mastery over?:

The two Habits of a Mathematician I have the most mastery over would be the Communicating
Thinking in a Clear and Accessible Way, and Reflecting and Synthesizing.

The reason I chose Communicating thinking in a clear and accessible way was because I feel that
on some of the POWs (problem of the week) we did in class I really mastered and understood.
For example POW 7 (see below) was one of my favorite POWs. Mainly because we had to use
logic and we got to play with cards. I felt that I understood it really well and I worked with other
peers to figure it out. I explained the problem in a different way to students who didnt
understand it completely. This made me feel like a leader and I felt very proud of myself. I was
able to communicate what I felt was the right answer and I felt confident in myself.
For POW 7 we had 10 playing cards all labeled from A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. We are
supposed to make the cards go in order by flipping one card over and putting the next one under
the deck. The rest is explained on my reflection of the POW.

Problem of the Week 7

Due Friday, November 20
Understanding the problem: For this POW we had 10 playing cards all
labeled from A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. We are supposed to
make the cards go in order by flipping one card over and putting the
next one under the deck.
Process + Solution:
We were excited to get started on our POW, we all went to work and set
out our deck A-10 and placed them in different places for it to work.
Our process was trial and error. We started out knowing that 1,2,3,4,
and 5 needed to have numbers between them. We found that after 5 we
needed to go back to 6, and from there we kept cards down and figuring
out where those cards would have to be in our remaining stack to fall
in the right place. The first set we got was A, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 9,
5, and 10, when we went through, flipping the cards we got as high as
6. We tried again and again and again.

Finally we got the set, A, 6, 2, 10, 3, 7, 4, 9, 5, and 8, we went

through the process again and it all went in order until ten Finally.

Justification: I think that there may be other sets for this problem.
Aliza showed us how to do it first and all of us kids were amazed by
this magic trick and ready to do it themselves. I believe our solution
is correct though. We can set the cards up again in the same order and
it will go in order up to 10. We tried many different ways and each
one didnt work until our last set. This answer corresponds to our
prediction very well in the beginning of trying to figure out our
answer, but towards the end our predictions were off a little around
6. So we kept trying until we got the correct answer. We know this is
the correct answer because we have tested it more than once, and get
the same answer every time.

My second habit is Reflecting and Synthesizing. The reason I chose this was because a lot of the
problems and explorations we had consisted of reflecting on our answers and applying it when it
came to corrections. Most of our Explorations that we received I had the wrong answer or I had
to think about how I got the answer I got.

For this exploration we applied different logic based questions and asked ourselves if they were
true or false. In the outside world we have a lot of logic based decisions. I am always trying to
perfect this habit and apply it to other things in school and throughout my life.

2. Which Habit do I feel needs work or room to grow?

The habit I feel I can work on would be Reflecting and Synthesizing. I believe that there is
always room for improvement. Personally if I get the wrong answer I dont always ask myself
why or how. I think the one thing that held me back from this semester was the fear of failure. I
wasnt willing to ask for help and fix my mistakes. Ive learned throughout the year that doing
this doesnt get me far at all and that it is okay to ask for help and develop rules as a learner. As I
grow and learn more I want to also grow my habit of reflection.