| Math Rap By Mike F, the Happy Math Rapper The happy math rapper presents math lessons in the current language of today's youth. So many rappers apparently believe it is not a good idea to smile. I guees they think they need to be "tough on the street." Reserach shows that smiling forces the brain to create "happy cheicals" in the brain. "Fake it until you make it" or pretend to be positive and eventually you will feel positive and optimistic. (It helps to study...in addition to smiling.) If you want more MATH VIDEOS, write to www.whatdoyaknow.com and learn about other products on CD for computers. The lyrics are copyright by Mike F in 2003. If you want to record your own math rap with these lyrics, please request permission. There will be a royalty payment (in connection with the permission to perform his raps), and the royalty payment will help Mike in his continued studies. Percent to DECIMAL (point) Start with percent drop the point two times to the left drop the point twice to the left For example, there are some percents for you to sample 50 percent goes zero point five 0.5 20 percent goes zero point 2 0.2 don’t forget NOT to move to the right remember! DON’T go RIGHT You need to GO LEFT. Here’s the next step that you can find useful, too. one percent goes 0.01 zero point zero one five percent goes 0.05 zero point zero five Add a zero to the left side of the number Move the point left twice to the number then you’ll find out if you’re right with your assumption. The Pythagoras Rap The 3 4 5 poem every test triangle has 3, 4 and 5 Yes, every test has a triangle with 3, 4 and 5 or maybe 6, 8 and 10 Look for the pattern in the numbers around the triangle. Then the next step begins. The short side that goes with THREE can be 6, 30 or 33. The middle side that goes with FOUR It can be 8, 40 or 44 The long side that goes with FIVE Can be 10, 50 or 55. To find the right pattern You must look at all of the sides Just remember to relate 3, 4 and 5. Circles The Greeks looked at Circles A long time ago they were looking through and around. if you go straight through and across the circles The DIAMETER is there, you just found it. If you go outside they call it CIRCUMFERENCE It’s the perimeter of the circle You just went around it That’s why they call it the CIRCUMFERENCE Let’s say the circle is your home It’s like a person you just warned Can not come around the fence The fence is the PERIMETER of a circle. There’s a radius from my house to the gate. Radius is half way, that’s all I have to say So you can stay out, I can lead you straight across the DIAMETER, and you’ll ask to get to know the AREA That’s to get to know the inside. (More from Mr. McCrea... Mike F needs to work on this paragraph) The formula for the FENCE, is three time the DIAMETER. The call it PI, without the E, You can’t eat this pie But it a little more than three THREE POINT one Four That’s what they tell me, not much more, So if the circle is 10 inches across, Then it’s three times ten to go around. If you want the exact circumference It’s not a big difference Thirty is almost the same Thirty one point four puts in the center of the game. Now if you want the INSIDE of this circle, You gotta start with half. The radius is five if the diameter is ten. Area is R times R times pie (again). The teacher says PIE ARE SQUARED but I think he means the pie is Square. The Circle’s area is Rad times Rad times Three, So five times five gives 25 and Three times more is Seventy Five and you’ve heard enough from me. Fractions to Percent You start with a fraction I’ll tell you every action. You’ve got to go to percent Just open up to these steps. It’s the dollars on top and the people on the bottom With powers I got with dollars tell my people to share them -- “I got them!” How many cents to each now watch how I spread it -- don’t worry, I’ll teach STEP ONE change the dollars to cents make sure you take count of all the dollars and cents. STEP 2 Share the cents with all of the peeps Hopefully you’ll get a better understanding with the words that I speak. Step 3: Add the percent sign. You know! the two dots, put in the middle line..... . / . >>> % Conversation Mr. M: You are doing a great job, Mike. Fergus: You just need to modernize your language, Mr. McCray. Mr. M: You’re right. I need to go west side! What is dyslexia? It is a learning problem. People with dyslexia have a problem with spelling, writing and reading. Who has this problem? What did they do to overcome the problem? Many people with dyslexia read slower and use their imagination. Because they know that they have the problem, they try to expect the difficulty and work around it. Many people who have a learning disability with reading, writing and spelling don’t know that they might have dyslexia. We hope that teachers know about this problem and help students get over it. Who knows? Probably a lot of people in this school have this problem. (notes by a student) |
| “Driving is not a right, it’s a privilege,” states an article in the Journal of Aging Studies (Cobb par. 42). “No one understands how it affects a family when they lose a child” [in an accident by an elderly person that could have been prevented], continues the article. Although some may think that driving gives the elderly independence, the general safety of the public is at risk. The elderly are dangerous! Poor driving by the elderly endangers others and themselves. As people age, bodies and minds weaken, vision decreases. Missouri and Illinois have a mandatory driving test for the elderly. Driving tests for people sixty-five years and older should be mandated by all state governments, for everyone’s safety. Older drivers have many accidents. Statistics show that the elderly are the second highest group to get into accidents every year (Cobb 2). From 1989 to 1999 the elderly killed in crashes increased by 33% nationwide. People seventy-five years and older have the highest crash rates per mile driven, including teenagers (“Keeping” 1). At the age of eighty-five years old, the elderly fail to obey traffic signs and as a result, crash rates begin to skyrocket. Insurance costs are based on the cost of repairs. Fewer accidents would lower everyone’s insurance premiums costs. More car accidents increase insurance premiums (“Profiles” 1). Cobb said: “An 87-year-old man slammed onto a group of third-graders who were on a field trip at O’Hare International Airport. One child was killed, and 67 children and 10 adults were hospitalized.” The elderly kill many people by driving. There were 365,000 drivers sixty-five years old and over, who needed to get their licenses renewed in Pennsylvania in 2000. When tested, 77,000 of the people had new restrictions placed on their driving (Walser 4). The elderly can be a road hazard, and since the elderly population is growing so fast, this can be dangerous. The elderly should use other modes of transportation. This would keep them from having traffic accidents. Old people can be very dangerous on the road. They leave their blinkers on so it can be difficult to know which way they are turning. Also, older people in motor homes often shoot out of unseen roads and cause traffic jams and accidents (Baker 2). Seniors drive fewer miles than people twenty-five years and under. Although they have a lower crash rate then teenagers, it is probably because they drive fewer miles. If the elderly people drove as much as teens, then they would be the age group with the highest number of crashes (Cobb 3-10). For every 100,000 miles driven, the crash rates of older adults was double that of the younger drivers (Owsly par. 1). The United States population is growing, which means that the population of seniors is growing too. Older people are the fastest growing population of drivers on the road. They are the largest percentage of drivers in the public. From 1964 to 1990, the number of elderly who were driving increased by over 50% (Cobb pg. 2). Also, by 2020 one out of five people in the United States will be sixty-five and over (Walser par. 3). In Florida, the population of seniors is even larger. These elderly cause a lot of accidents. The elderly should use other types of transportation to decrease accidents in Florida (Baker 1-3). Elderly people should use other transportation, rather than driving with an impairment. For example, car pooling could be arranged with family members. They could take taxicabs or use shuttle buses (“Driving” 1-2). Transportation assistance should be provided for the elderly people who are no longer able to drive. Communities should take the responsibility and set funds aside to provide transportation for the elderly. If towns do not have other transportation, then the older people would not be able to go shopping for necessities. When seniors go for their yearly medical check up, doctors usually tell them if they should drive or not. Before doctors take away the license of an elderly person, they should look to see if there is other transportation available in their communities (Cobb 2-12). Once an older driver is in an accident, the elderly person is three times more likely to die or be disabled (Cobb 7). Some states allow family members or doctors to establish a new driving test for the elderly, but test results are confidential. In 1980, 51, 000 elderly drivers were killed on the roads of the United States. Driving fatalities increased in the 1980’s for people sixty-five and over by 43% (Cobb 2). The elderly should not drive with impairment, to protect themselves and others. Weakening of the body and mind affects driving. It is the health conditions of the person that matter and not age that affect a person’s ability to drive (Baker par. 2). Robert Raleigh, Maryland’s director of driving safety, says, “We’ve examined 100-year-old drivers who are perfectly fine and 75-year-olds who are not” (qtd. in “Keeping” par. 6). Health is a big factor in determining driving safely. It is what causes you to drive or not drive. Either weakening of the body, or weakening of the mind, will cause the elderly to drive or not to drive. Car accidents are the second most common reason for an elderly person to visit the emergency room. Usually sensory, cognitive, and physical defects are the impairments that affect the elderly’s driving performance (Owsley 2). Once a doctor knows that their patient has a serious impairment, then the doctor could tell the elderly that he/she can not drive any more. In Missouri, during 1999, doctor’s kept impaired drivers from driving at all. The elderly die more often from serious medical problems resulting from car accidents. The elderly people’s body weakens and they are unable to drive as well as they used to drive. Diseases affect the elderly’s ability to drive. Diabetes, sleeping disorders, such as narcolepsy are a concern. The elderly fall asleep at the wheel. Recurrent fainting spells or dizziness should force an elderly person from driving, until the problem is controlled. Arthritis affects the elderly person driving because when they drive, and the elderly’s fingers cramp up, it is hard to grip the wheel, or their toes cramp up and it hurts to push on the brakes (“Driving” par. 1). Parkinson’s Diseases is a disorder in the central nervous system. Sometimes you cannot control what you do. In one state, the elderly have to wait four weeks after a heart attack or a stroke to start driving again (Walser par. 10). Hearing loss in the elderly is a minor condition. Weakening of the mind is one of the reasons that the elderly get into many car accidents. Sometimes the elderly do not recognize where they are going and get lost and panic. This is a problem. Elderly people exhibit poor reaction time; they often crash into suddenly stopped cars. The elderly do not see bicyclists on the side of the road. It does not register in the elderly’s mind to stop immediately. The elderly could have memory loss, so when the elderly person is driving, they might forget where they are going, or forget how to drive. The elderly could have trouble recognizing signs and not be able to know if it says CONSTRUCTION AHEAD or not. Also, if an elderly person has Alzheimer’s Disease he/she is two of four times more likely to have an accident (Walser par. 12). Alzheimer’s Disease is a disease marked by progressive loss of mental capacity resulting from the degeneration of brain cells. Decreasing vision is also a big factor of why the elderly get into a lot of car accidents. Aging decreases vision in older adults. Forty States in America make older drivers take a vision test before renewing a driver’s license (Cobb 3). Many different diseases cause a vision disability. Some of those diseases are cataracts, glaucoma, astigmatism, and glare problems. All eye diseases affect the elderly’s driving ability. A cataract is a loss of the transparency of the lens of the eye. More then half of all Americans sixty-five and over have cataracts. Impairment in one eye was also a warrant of concern for the elderly. Cataracts are a big threat to road safely. Impairment due to cataracts increased crash risks in older people, even if it was in only one eye. It is difficult to drive with cataracts, so the elderly have to avoid visual challenges such as driving at night or driving at rush hour. The elderly were two and a half times more likely to have a car crash when they had cataracts then when they had none. Some elderly people voluntarily stop driving because they have cataracts. Cataracts that are surgically removed have a dramatic affect in improving vision (Owsley 9). This should be encouraged. Glaucoma is a disease of the eye, which results when the sensory organ is clogged so that the aquis humor is unable to filter properly. Glaucoma mainly happens to older people and can cause blindness. Visual problems, like glaucoma, increase crash risk for the elderly people. Many elderly people with glaucoma have trouble driving. Astigmatism is a condition of unequal curvatures along the different medians in one or more refractive surfaces of the eye. The rays of a luminous point are not focused at a single point on the retina, so there are many rays of light that hit in front of the retina. Both near and far objects appear to be blurry. Astigmatisms or glare problems cause an elderly person to crash more often (Walser 2). Glare problems narrow the elderly person’s vision, and decrease resistance to glare. In conclusion, driving tests for people sixty-five years and older should be mandated by state governments, for everyone’s protection. Driving test of the elderly would decrease the number of accidents caused by the elderly. Poor driving, by the elderly, endangers others and themselves. As people age, bodies and minds weaken, and vision also decreases. Elderly people are dangerous on the road! Mandatory testing saves lives. Are you ready to risk your life? By Marina V. Go to MATH FOR ARTISTS Other web sites for students to visit and learn mroe about... http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/index.html Go to this site above, and take the political quadrant test to find where EXACTLY your compass is...! It is insightful to do as it has good questions to answer about yourself. Then tell me where you scored on the PC quadrants. Like, if the crosspoint is zero, and the ends of each quadrant line is at ten, and then you come out in the middle of the northeast quadrant: right-authoritarian, then say 5 authoritarian, 5 rightwing, for example... |
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