Next experiment with Linear Programming

Ok so its been a while for blogging but here goes.

Introducing Linear programming to my yr 13 alternative stats class tomorrow. Its one of the most authentic maths we do. Completely connected to the real world and yet most of us still teach it by skill first then context.

Last year I changed it up a little but this time I am going to completely change how I do it.

I found this great video.  Introduction to Linear Programming

This guy does a great job of introducing a real world problem using a belgium chocolate business example. I could flip this lesson which I would do if I had a mainstream group but I am going to watch the video with the girls and work through it with them.

I have used a video website " teachem"that allows me to insert questions as we watch the video. I will give the girls a worksheet to fill in as a they watch  TEACHEM VIDEO. Place this on Moodle so anyone can watch it again if they want.

I am hoping that I won't need to introduce separately the idea of an inequality as it will be a non-issue from the context. What making an expression into an inequality means and why we do it.

So this lesson will be only about writing the constraints, identifying the variables, and creating an objective function from context.

THEN the next step is all about the graph work. Here is where I do the skill work around using graphing calculators to create graphs and tables of points. But my hope is that they have something to hang it all on and understand why they need these skills.

If I had my choice I would use Desmos to do all the graphing work...its so good for this but they can only use graphing calculators so they need to get really good at rearranging and using x and y intercepts.

I will let you know how it goes.