IMSAMJ v.4 Contents

IMSA Math Journal

Volume 4, Spring 1996

Printing of the 1996 IMSA Math Journal was made possible entirely by AT&T through its 1995 People First Gold Star Program. Through the People First Gold Star Program, grants were awarded by AT&T to Chicago area non-profit organizations and schools in three categories: traditional in-school programs, school leadership efforts and other educational programs outside the schools. A committee of AT&T employee volunteers reviewed and selected the award recipients based on the program objectives, measurement of results, impact potential, degree of education need and AT&T employee involvement and leadership. AT&T logo

ProblemSets.pdf	*Problem Sets à la* IMSA** by The IMSA Mathematics Faculty
GeomMatrices.pdf	Geometric Transformations with Matrices by Michael Sloan
MathWords.pdf	Math Words by Dr. Micah Fogel and Christina Loos
Palindrome.pdf	The Palindrome Order of a Number by Susan K. Eddins
Parahexes.pdf	Parahexes by Barry Schnorr
PercentIncrease.pdf	Percent Increases and Decreases: What Do They Mean? by Charles L. Hamberg and Susan K. Eddins
TriangleCenters.pdf	Triangle Centers: Points of Concurrency and Symmetric Points by George Milauskas
MathWalk.pdf	Mathematization: A Walk In The Park by Susan K. Eddins
GeomImages.pdf	The Geometry of Real Images by Dr. Raymond J. Dagenais

more Journal articles below

"It's Really Very Simple"

by: Sue Eddins and Kim Eddins
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
and Batavia High School

"Do you need any help with implicit differentiation," I asked my daughter, Kim. "No thanks, mom, it's really pretty simple. The problem asks you to find four things, they give you three, you just have to look through the problem until you find them, then you solve for the fourth."

Kim has since amplified this simple little statement that seems to sum up about half of the math problems in the high school curriculum. She now knows that sometimes you need n things but they only give you n - 2. Then you wither have to look for two equations to solve or you first have to take the derivative, set it equal to zero, solve and substitute it back until you find all you need.

Guess it really is very simple when you look at it like that!

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ExploreEvenOdd.pdf	Some Explorations With Even And Odd Functions by Charles L. Hamberg
LinearQuadratic.pdf	Connections Involving Linear And Quadratic Functions by George Milauskas and Charles L. Hamberg
ContinuedFrac.pdf	Continued Fractions and Composition Functions by Ben Chelf
JBTTMH.pdf	The "JBTTMH" (J. B. Tate Trigonometric Mnemonic Hexagon) by Joe Tate
ThreeSpatialPyth.pdf	Three Spatial Pythagorean Theorems by Dr. Gregory Galperin
VarEccentricities.pdf	Variable Eccentricities by Charles L. Hamberg and Susan K. Eddins
SeeNewtonMethod.pdf	Seeing Newton's Method by Ruth Dover
GroupTesting.pdf	Group Testing: An Optimization Problem For Calculus by Dan Teague
NoahSheets.pdf	The Noah Sheets by Noah Rosenberg and George Milauskas

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: We are proud to present the fourth issue of the IMSA Math Journal. In this edition we have included work by IMSA faculty, support staff, students, and alumni as well as articles by a faculty member of a sister school, The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and a colleague at Eastern Illinois University. The purpose of the IMSAMJ is to communicate through mathematics with both students and teachers. Some of our goals include:

Presenting teaching insights, lessons, problems.
Sharing mathematical ideas, mathematical teaching ideas, observations, approaches, connections, extensions, generalizations of interest to students and teachers of mathematics.
Featuring mathematics problems for use inside and outside of the classroom, i.e. math contests, math competitions, etc.
Discussing and sharing the role of technology including calculators and computers in the instruction and learning of mathematics.
Sharing our experiences as educators as we strive to help students construct mathematical meaning through an integrative inter- and intra-disciplinary set of learning experiences.

We are also happy to announce the creation of an IMSA home page on the World Wide Web from which information about IMSA, its staff and its programs may be obtained. We are working toward providing the Math Journal on line and later plan to add still more activities and materials for math teachers, students and parents. In the future math team coaches and members should be able to find information about competitions and materials suitable for use in preparing for them. We are very excited about the potential for this new resource. You can find us on the web at: http://www.imsa.edu/. We sincerely appreciate the support provided to us by AT&T in funding this internet initiative as well as the publication of the Journal.

We have been encouraged by the support, kind words, and constructive suggestions we have received from readers of our previous issues of the IMSAMJ and look forward to hearing your views on this issue. Please take time to complete and return the Feedback form.

Susan Eddins, Charles Hamberg
Christina Loos, George Milauskas
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

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