Introductions and Reintroductions

Hello everyone! I'm Kyle (Sarte) and I'm here to summarize for you what was covered during our first two days of Pre-Calculus 40S. This first blog post is going to be a relatively easy one to write, since more time was spent solving riddles, watching videos, and learning about Mr. Piatek's love for travelling, photography, and mushrooms than on math!

On Thursday afternoon, we went around the class and introduced ourselves by name, accompanied by something interesting about us. We found ourselves amongst artists, musicians, and athletes, and learned of each other's various hobbies and interests. 

Prerequisite Skills worksheet

Following the handing out of our course outline, Mr. Piatek brought us face-to-face with the challenges of Pre-Calculus 40S and the reality of what was to be expected. He emphasized that Pre-Calculus 40S is the "class you have never taken before in high school", but also reminded us (using two past students as examples) that a final mark of 100 is an achievable score. Points about the provincial exam at the end of the semester were also brought up, with Mr. Piatek mentioning it's 30% weight on our final mark (as opposed to the previous year's 5%) and the test's format.

While the Monkey Business Illusion (which you can watch again by clicking here) was a great lesson in observation and Mr. Piatek succeeded in messing with our minds with his math magic trick, a fair bit of Friday's class was spent reintroducing ourselves to grade 11 pre-calculus topics  with the Prerequisite Skills worksheet (pictured left). 

Some problems on the worksheet included factoring, producing and sketching graphs, solving trigonometric equations, determining the reference angle, and completing the square. In class, the one example Mr. Piatek went over with us was the factoring of a cubic polynomial. To reiterate what he covered in class, I have provided a mini-lesson write up for anyone needing a reminder.

For the last half hour to forty-five minutes of class, we began on our first unit booklet entitled Permutations, Combinations, and Binomial Theorem.

The Fundamental Counting Principle

Example 1: A cafe has a lunch special consisting of an egg or a ham sandwich (E,H); milk, juice, or coffee (M,J,C); and a yogurt or pie (Y,P) for dessert. List all possible meals if one item is taken from each category. How many meals are there? 

By using a graphical method of listing out each letter and the possible meal choices, a total of 12 choices were calculated. This method allowed for a detailed visual representation of the meal possibilities, but was a very time consuming effort.

How could you determine this without listing them?

Simply multiplying the amounts of exclusive choices (2 sandwich choices, 3 drink choices, and 2 dessert choices) yielded the same results in less time.

Reaching no further than the first page, Mr. Piatek spoke a bit more on the fundamental counting principle and ended the lesson there.

Hopefully my summary of our first two days in class got across clearly. I feel as if I've written too much, so I'll end this here. I look forward to learning and studying with all of you this semester!

Thanks for reading, 

Kyle Sarte