This task assumes students are familiar with mixing problems. This approach brings out different issues than simply asking students to solve a mixing problem, which they can often set up using patterns rather than thinking about the meaning of each part of the equations.
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This task presents a real world application of finite geometric series. The context can lead into several interesting follow-up questions and projects. Many drugs only become effective after the amount in the body builds up to a certain level. This can be modeled very well with geometric series.
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This is a standard problem phrased in a non-standard way. Rather than asking students to perform an operation, expanding, it expects them to choose the operation for themselves in response to a question about structure. The problem aligns with A-SSE.2 because it requires students to see the factored form as a product of sums, to which the distributive law can be applied.
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The problem deals with a rational expression which is built up from operations arising naturally in a context: adding the volumes of the fertilizer and the water, and dividing the volume of the fertilizer by the resulting sum. Thus it encourages students to see the expression as having meaning in terms of numbers and operations, rather than as an abstract arrangement of symbols.
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This task compares the usefulness of different forms of a quadratic expression. Students have to choose which form most easily provides information about the maximum value, the zeros and the vertical intercept of a quadratic expression in the context of a real world situation. Rather than just manipulating one form into the other, students can make sense out of the structure of the expressions.
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Parts (d) and (e) of this task constitute a very advanced application of the skill of making use of structure: in (d) students are being asked to use the defining property of even and odd functions to manipulate expressions involving function notation. In (e) they are asked to see the structure in the system of two equations involving functions.
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This question provides students with an opportunity to see expressions as constructed out of a sequence of operations: first taking the square root of n, then dividing the result of that operation into s. Students studying statistics encounter the expression in this question as the standard deviation of a sampling distribution with samples of size n when the distribution from which the sample is taken has standard deviation s.
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The purpose of this task is to emphasize the use of the Remainder Theorem (a discussion of which should obviously be considered as a prerequisite for the task) as a method for determining structure in polynomial in equations, and in this particular instance, as a replacement for division of polynomials.
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The primary purpose of this problem is to rewrite simple rational expressions in different forms to exhibit different aspects of the expression, in the context of a relevant real-world context (the fuel efficiency of of a car). Indeed, the given form of the combined fuel economy computation is useful for direct calculation, but if asked for an approximation, is not particularly helpful.
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In this task students must investigate this conjecture to discover that it does not work in all cases: Pick any two integers. Look at the sum of their squares, the difference of their squares, and twice the product of the two integers you chose. Those three numbers are the sides of a right triangle.
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The intention of this task is to provide extra depth to the standard A-APR.2 it is principally designed for instructional purposes only. The students may use graphing technology: the focus, however, should be on what happens to the function g when x=0 and the calculator may or may not be of help here (depending on how sophisticated it is!).
Material Type: Activity/Lab
For a polynomial function p, a real number r is a root of p if and only if p(x) is evenly divisible by x_r. This fact leads to one of the important properties of polynomial functions: a polynomial of degree d can have at most d roots. This is the first of a sequence of problems aiming at showing this fact.
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This task continues ``Zeroes and factorization of a quadratic polynomial I.'' The argument here generalizes, as shown in ``Zeroes and factorization of a general polynomial'' to show that a polynomial of degree d can have at most d roots. This task is intended for instructional purposes to help students see more clearly the link between factorization of polynomials and zeroes of polynomial functions.
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This task provides a simple but interesting and realistic context in which students are led to set up a rational equation (and a rational inequality) in one variable, and then solve that equation/inequality for an unknown variable.
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This task does not actually require that the student solve the system but that they recognize the pairs of linear equations in two variables that would be used to solve the system. This is an important step in the process of solving systems.
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This simple conceptual task focuses on what it means for a number to be a solution to an equation, rather than on the process of solving equations.
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The purpose of this task is to give students practice writing a constraint equation for a given context. Instruction accompanying this task should introduce the notion of a constraint equation as an equation governing the possible values of the variables in question.
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The emphasis in this task is on the progression of equations, from two that involve different values of the sales tax, to one that involves the sales tax as a parameter. It is designed to foster the habit of looking for regularity in solution procedures, so that students don't approach every equation as a new problem but learn to notice familiar types.
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This task asks students to use inverse operations to solve the equations for the unknown variable, or for the designated variable if there is more than one. Two of the equations are of physical significance and are examples of Ohm's Law and Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.
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This task is designed to make students think about the meaning of the quantities presented in the context and choose which ones are appropriate for the two different constraints presented. In particular, note that the purpose of the task is to have students generate the constraint equations for each part (though the problem statements avoid using this particular terminology), and not to have students solve said equations.
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