Multiplication tables have some wonderful and quite surprising patterns. This is one of them. Draw any rectangle in a multiplication table and you will find that the products of opposite corners are equal. For example a rectangle around a full 12 by 12 table will be 1144 and 1212. Try it, is it always true? …
Another famous pattern, Pascal’s triangle, is easy to construct and explore on spreadsheets. Create a formula for any cell that adds the two cells in a row (horizontal) above it. This pattern is like Fibonacci’s in that both are the addition of two cells, but Pascal’s is spatially different and produces extraordinary results. Pascal’’ triangle …
What does each of the coefficients do? How does it change the graph of the parabola. What does a do, what does c do and a question still rarely asked, what does changing b do to change the graph. To see what b does more clearly we have you add a graph of the linear …
We extend the place value generator to 100’s of thousands to show you how the pattern of 1’s, 10’s, 100’s, continues to 1,000’s, 10,000’s, 100,000’s. Enter numbers and watch the expanded and compact forms of place value change. Pay special attention to using text units and take a look at the rule we used to …
The rule of 72 is an old banker’s rule of thumb to find out how long it will take to double your money at different interest rates. Financial literacy has become an increasingly important topic for K-12 education and we believe spreadsheets and headmath or mental estimation should be central to it. Rule of 72 …
Strings need not begin and end on axes that are at right angles to each other which we call Cartesian. It is quite interesting that Descartes himself did not use axes at right angles. We consider this a challenge because students have to figure out how to move both the axes and the lines. Once …
Manage a business. The Lemonade Stand has been a business simulation developed in many different versions. We believe this is the first time that it has been created as a spreadsheet simulation. If you are a young entrepreneur who wants to learn how a business works and how you can use spreadsheets to improve your business we …
In 1941, Joe DiMaggio got a hit in 56 straight games. This record has never been beaten. Some say it is the greatest record in all of sports. You can develop a simulation of DiMaggio’s streak to see why it is considered so difficult to beat. And you can decide for yourself whether you think …
Spreadsheets make it easy for us to explore patterns in the whole numbers. This Lab does that and helps you learn the basics of spreadsheets like cell addressing, copy and pasting, and making rules. It is designed for every learner including young students.
Though spreadsheets lets you put geometric shapes on the screen, those shapes are not connected with the cells and cannot be changed by using different values. We wanted to make geometric shapes that we could control and change by changing parameters. This is our first try. You can learn to use linear functions to create …
