1. Did you know about WolframAlpha?
No. I had never heard anything about it.
2. Did you know about Google Squared?
No.
3. What percentage of China's population is the population of the United States?
There is a population of 1.35 billion people in China and there is a population 309 million in the United States. This makes the Unites States less than 23% of Chinas population.
4. What percentage of India's population is the population of the United States?
India's populations is 1.21 billion compared to the United States, which is 309 million. This means that the United States is less than 26% of India's population.
5. Now what do you think of the facts reported in Do You Know?
The information given really helps put how fast our world is growing into perspective. I really enjoyed reading all of the facts presented.
6. Do you think WolframAlpha and Google Squared will be useful for you? for your students? Why or why not?
I think both of these search engines would be very helpful to students. On WolframAlpha, there are charts that go along with information presented. This will help students learn to read graphs and us them in their research.
Ouida McDaniel understood the point of this exercise better than anyone else so far. Here is a portion of her post:
ReplyDelete"After looking at this information I believe that the statics that are reported in Do You Know? did not show the whole picture. It is easy to be shocked that India has more gifted students than the U.S. has students if that is the only information that you are given. But when you look at the population size of each country you see that the population is so much greater in India that it follows that they would have more gifted students. India's population is almost 75% larger than the United States. I think as teachers we need to teach our students to look at all the data so they get a clear picture of a topic not just a piece."