This video will help students, particularly those not in AP-level classes, have a practical application for knowing about the major divisions between plants, particularly about the details of plant anatomy and reproduction. Students will be able to :Identify the major evolutionary innovations that separate plant divisions, and classify plants as belonging to one of those divisions based on phenotypic differences in plants. Classify plants by their pollen dispersal methods using pollen dispersal mapping, and justify the location of a _„ƒcrime scene_„Ž using map analysis. Analyze and present their analysis of banding patterns from DNA fingerprinting done using plants in a forensic context.

This learning video presents an introduction to the Flaws of Averages using three exciting examples: the ''crossing of the river'' example, the ''cookie'' example, and the ''dance class'' example. Averages are often worthwhile representations of a set of data by a single descriptive number. The objective of this module, however, is to simply point out a few pitfalls that could arise if one is not attentive to details when calculating and interpreting averages. The essential prerequisite knowledge for this video lesson is the ability to calculate an average from a set of numbers. During this video lesson, students will learn about three flaws of averages: (1) The average is not always a good description of the actual situation, (2) The function of the average is not always the same as the average of the function, and (3) The average depends on your perspective. To convey these concepts, the students are presented with the three real world examples mentioned above.

This learning video addresses a particular problem of selection bias, a statistical bias in which there is an error in choosing the individuals or groups to make broader inferences. Rather than delve into this broad topic via formal statistics, we investigate how it may appear in our everyday lives, sometimes distorting our perceptions of people, places and events, unless we are careful. When people are picked at random from two groups of different sizes, most of those selected usually come from the bigger group. That means we will hear more about the experience of the bigger group than that of the smaller one. This isn't always a bad thing, but it isn't always a good thing either. Because big groups ''speak louder,'' we have to be careful when we write mathematical formulas about what happened in the two groups. We think about this issue in this video, with examples that involve theaters, buses, and lemons. The prerequisite for this video lesson is a familiarity with algebra. It will take about one hour to complete, and the only materials needed are a blackboard and chalk.

MIT BLOSSOMS is not a single resource. It is a video repository of more than 120 math and science lessons for high school classes.

In this lesson, through various examples and activities, exponential growth and polynomial growth are compared to develop an insight about how quickly the number can grow or decay in exponentials. A basic knowledge of scientific notation, plotting graphs and finding intersection of two functions is assumed.

This learning video presents an introduction to graph theory through two fun, puzzle-like problems: ''The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg'' and ''The Chinese Postman Problem''. Any high school student in a college-preparatory math class should be able to participate in this lesson. Materials needed include: pen and paper for the students; if possible, printed-out copies of the graphs and image that are used in the module; and a blackboard or equivalent. During this video lesson, students will learn graph theory by finding a route through a city/town/village without crossing the same path twice. They will also learn to determine the length of the shortest route that covers all the roads in a city/town/village. To achieve these two learning objectives, they will use nodes and arcs to create a graph and represent a real problem.

This video is meant to be a fun, hands-on session that gets students to think hard about how machines work. It teaches them the connection between the geometry that they study and the kinematics that engineers use -- explaining that kinematics is simply geometry in motion. In this lesson, geometry will be used in a way that students are not used to. Materials necessary for the hands-on activities include two options: pegboard, nails/screws and a small saw; or colored construction paper, thumbtacks and scissors. Some in-class activities for the breaks between the video segments include: exploring the role of geometry in a slider-crank mechanism; determining at which point to locate a joint or bearing in a mechanism; recognizing useful mechanisms in the students' communities that employ the same guided motion they have been studying.