Follow me
Embrace the Drawing Board
  • Blog
  • 180 Days
  • 3 Acts
  • Virtual Filing Cabinet

Too Long to Tweet

4/24/2013

2 Comments

 
Language is a funny thing.  I have talked about it before but the use of language and our ability to reason numerically is so interesting.  I had a conversation with a student today where he told me about his dogs. It was one of those off topic conversations.  He was describing the size of his dogs and he said "I have two hundred ten pound dogs."  Now I have intentionally left out any dashes, because I want to let you in on what I understood.  When he said that I thought of this massive group of hundreds of these ten-pound puppies.  He meant he had two dogs that were 110 pounds.

Which brings me to my thought.  In one sentence we can have three different meanings, the likes of which are such.

I have:
  1. I have 210 pound dogs
  2. I have 200 10 pound dogs
  3. I have 2 110 pound dogs*


What does this tell us about the nature of quantity?  They all sound the same but all produce different quantities.  In scenario 1 we have 210x pounds of dogs. We do not know how many dogs I have, but they are all around the same size.  In scenario 2 I have 2000 pounds of dogginess, and in scenario 3 I have 220 pounds of dogs.  In some weird linguistic sense, these seem like they should all be similar in some sense, but they all produce different images, and different quantities entirely.

I do not know why this particular quantity pun amuses me so much, but I feel there is something here.

* Ya, I realise that mathematically we should say two one-hundred-ten pound dogs, but conversationally we rarely say that.

**Another fun quantity pun to ask kids especially is would rather have one and a half million dollars or one million and a half dollars? Something seems eerily the same about those, but they are screamingly different.

2 Comments
Andrew Stadel link
4/25/2013 12:49:25 am

This is a great topic. Could you see this rollover into time and distance?
I have an informative question: what's more commonly used in Canada, pounds or grams?
Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Timon Piccini
4/25/2013 02:02:41 pm

Totally Andrew. The interesting aspect of this is in the numbers themselves. The unit (and therefore topic) can change to accommodate.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Blogroll

    dy/dan
    Overthinking My Teaching
    Fawn Ngyuen
    Mr. Vaudrey
    Divisible by Three
    Approximately Normal
    Emergent Math
    Tweet

    Categories

    All
    101qs.com
    3acts
    Algebra
    Anyqs
    #anyqs
    Assessment
    Board Games
    Calculus
    Classroom Management
    Density
    Equations
    Exponents
    Feedback
    Formative
    Geometry
    Integers
    Ka
    Language
    Lesson Ideas
    Lesson Plans
    Lesson Reflection
    Lesson Resources
    Lessons I Am Not Even Near Teaching
    Lesson Starters
    Manipulatives
    Math Lessons
    Math Talk
    Number
    Number Bases
    Numeracy
    Operations
    Pbl
    Percent
    Place Value
    Probability
    Rates
    Rates And Ratios
    Ratios
    Reflections
    Report Cards
    Sbg
    Square Roots
    Statistics
    Summer Time Reflections
    The Mind Of The Student
    There I Tried It
    Twitterverse
    Variables
    Volume
    Wcydwt
    What I Want To Remember
    What I Want To Remember Years From Now

    Archives

    September 2015
    April 2015
    August 2014
    May 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.