Slope usages

[JeffKiper]

Ok guys this isn't a standard how do I use slope for analog.

My daughter hates math. She doesn't understand I've tried and tries to explain how I use it. She wants to know real world usages that "aren't what you use dad". Do you all have any other usages for slope.

 

[Ron Beaufort]

use it to GRAPHICALLY convert from Fahrenheit to Centigrade ... then show how to do the same conversion using y=mx + b ...

 

[mylespetro]

Roof pitch?

 

[Phrog30]

Why does she need examples? There are going to be lots of things she has to do in school that will not be needed at all in life. Man I wish I could go back to being a student. Was so much easier back then compared to now.

 

[Frost999]

Why does she need examples? There are going to be lots of things she has to do in school that will not be needed at all in life. Man I wish I could go back to being a student. Was so much easier back then compared to now.

I feel like it is the other way around... in school I had to solve arbitrary hypotheticals with often outdated methods for.... reasons (so I agree with half of that!).

I graduated at the very end of '99 and recall a class on communications where even a smith-chart (for antenna impedance matching) was considered cheating. What engineer IRL would not have SOME other actual tool(s) for this task? Will they EVER not-have access to them? This was not a "teaching moment"; the entire semester went this way. This was also gone over in the years prior (in the same program), so knowing how it worked was already covered.


Back to OP - Ron's example is excellent in my opinion.

 

[Steve Bailey]

You live in southern Indiana, so a ski slope probably won't help.
Does she have a multi-speed bicycle? If so maybe try to relate slope to the need to downshift.

 

[Ron Beaufort]

You live in southern Indiana

at least you don't live in Oregon ... make sure you're sitting down when/if you read the following link ... advice to Peter Nachtwey: don't read this link at all ...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/oregon-education-math-white-supremacy

 

[Brian123]

Roller coaster scariness factor?

 

[Donvw]

Slope

Rain gutters
Plumbing drain
Roses from center to side

 

[saultgeorge]

Ok guys this isn't a standard how do I use slope for analog.

My daughter hates math. She doesn't understand I've tried and tries to explain how I use it. She wants to know real world usages that "aren't what you use dad". Do you all have any other usages for slope.

I did an extra credit exercise in Trig class when I was at university on slope. I used an area of the city that I lived in that had a one-way street on which the traffic lights were synced to exactly 35 mph. That was a slope equation. Used distance and time. It was pretty cool and I got the extra credit.
Plus I've been fascinated with and a big critic of traffic control ever since

 

[drbitboy]

Holy moly, she is dissing the Holy Grail.

Slope is the value of unity, and anyone who can understand how to multiply by unity is ahead of 70-80% of the population.

Ask her if she wants to be a member of the great, ignorant, unwashed.

Or, if she learns to multiply by unity, and really groks what it means philosophically, then the rest of the math that she has to take will be so easy for her she will finish every assignment so quickly there won't be enough time spent on it to hate it.

That argument will go right over her head, of course.

Tell us what is she interested in; there will be an application of slope.

 

[drbitboy]

rain gutters
plumbing drain
roses from center to side

+1

 

[Nova5]

at least you don't live in Oregon ... make sure you're sitting down when/if you read the following link ... advice to Peter Nachtwey: don't read this link at all ...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/oregon-education-math-white-supremacy

Racist mathematics. bahahahahahahha. There is only ONE right answer, Never more. There are a MIRIADE of ways to get to that answer. We will all frustrate our child's teacher by teaching them OUR tricks and paths to the right answer. Which just doesn't sit well with Teacher X.

 

[Steve Bailey]

at least you don't live in Oregon ... make sure you're sitting down when/if you read the following link ... advice to Peter Nachtwey: don't read this link at all ...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/oregon-ed...hite-supremacy

I expect that that anyone who takes the time to look at any state's Department of Education can find a link to a workshop that offends him/her.

 

[Ron Beaufort]

I apologize if I've allowed myself to be misunderstood ...

it's not any sort of "offense" that's really causing the recent uprising among parents around the country ... instead it's the education industry's focus on "equity" - at the expense of "equality" ...

those two words sound alike - but in the ways that they're being used these days, the difference is having a profound effect on the way that children are being prepared for their futures ...

FULL DISCLOSURE: I've never had children - but if I did, I'd take a great deal of interest in how the schools (both public and private) are being taught these days ...