Rainfall

Lately there have been a lot of talk about Hurricanes wrecking the coastal regions of the US. The latest one on the news is Hurricane Ike. One statistic that I heard about this hurricane was that here in Los Angeles we have had 0.16 inches of rainfall from March 2008 to September 2008, while Hurricane Ike produced 15.75 inches of rain in just a few days in Houston, Texas.

Below are the graphs that show the average precipitation for the two cities from The Weather Channel Click on the image to enlarge it and see the numbers clearer.
Your job is to answer the following questions:

1. About how many years of average Los Angeles precipitation would equal the rainfall produced by Ike in Houston?
2. About how many months of average Houston precipitation would equal the rainfall produced by Ike?

Remember to explain how you found the answers to the questions.

Rosario's Dilemma

The following problem was submitted by Rosario.

Today my dad bought a box of chocolates. It contained 48 pieces. If they shared the 48 pieces equally, each of my household members (not including me) would have gotten 9.6 bars. But I want some too. :)

I need your help to figure out exactly how many bars each person should get. And how many people there are in total.

Sunday Times

Mr. Billett and I have the Sunday edition of the LA Times delivered to our door. We recently got a bill, and Mr. Billett sat down to figure out whether we are saving money by having the paper delivered, or whether it would be better to walk down to the corner and pick one up in person every Sunday.

According to the bill, we paid $17.20 to have the paper delivered every Sunday between 03/10/08 and 05/05/08. The price of the Sunday Times is $1.25 if you buy it in person.

Your job is to figure out:
1. Which is the better deal: delivery or walking to get the paper?
2. How much would we save over a whole year with the better deal?

Submitted by Jazmin

The following problem was submitted by one of my students, Jazmin. It is an excellent example of everyday Math.

Story Problems

(click the picture to enlarge)

Mr. Billett found this cartoon by Lynda Barry while he was reading the paper the other day. It makes fun of math word problems by exploring their "back-story", which is the history behind a situation. I thought it was relevant because we have been solving a lot of word problems involving proportions recently. (Click here to download the handouts under homework assignments for 12/17 and 12/12.)

To receive extra credit, you can make up a problem of your own, and come up with questions about the back-story like the girl in the cartoon. If you are working on this at school, you can use Comic Life to create an additional panel for the cartoon and email it to me.

If you choose to comment on this post, select a story problem we worked on in class, and make up some back-stroy questions for it. Have fun!