Special Blog Post #1

Many Students Misinterpreted the Data in Did You Know?

When first watching the video Did You Know?, I did not misinterpret the data. The 25% of the people in India with the highest IQs would outnumber the population in the United States because India has a much larger population than the United States. It does not mean that the people in India are smarter than the people in the United States. According to WolframAlpha, China's population is 1.35 billion, India's population is 1.21 billion, and the population of the United States is 309 million. The video also stated that 18 million Chinese speak English and 300 million more are learners. So, 318 million people in China either speak English or are learning to do so. However, this number only constitutes 23.56% of China's population. The United States only has 309 million people, but a larger percentage of people in the United States speak English than people in China.

I conducted two more WolframAlpha searches. The first search I conducted was comparing the life expectancies of people in India, China, and the United States. The life expectancy of people in India is 69.9 years, China's life expectancy is 73.5 years, and life expectancy of people in the United States is 78.1 years. The second search I conducted was comparing the number of secondary students in India, China, and the United States. The number of secondary students in India is 107.7 million, the number of secondary students in China is 99.22 million, and the number of secondary students in the United States is 24.19 million.

WolframAlpha would be useful in my classroom to both my students and me. As a future math teacher, I did another search in WolframAlpha for mathematics. Problems ranging from elementary mathematics to calculus came up as a result. This site would be helpful for my students because if they have a problem with a homework question, they can type the question into WolframAlpha and find the answer. What I really liked about this site is that it did not just show the answer to the problem, it showed a detailed solution.

Gary Hayes Social Media Chart

Gary Hayes Social Media Chart was awesome! I was amazed at how quickly the numbers increased. Gary Hayes has done an amazing job putting all this information together. This chart shows that technology will always be advancing, and more people are using technology each day.

I was amazed that in the first 5 seconds 200,000 likes and comments were made on Facebook, and over 10,000 tweets were sent on Twitter.

Technology is rapidly increasing. As a teacher, my job is to remain up to date on new technology. I need to be able to incorporate technology into my classroom that will benefit my students. This means that I need to stay connected through sites such as Pinterest and Blogger so that I can remain aware of new ideas and new technology that other teachers are using.