Monday, September 8, 2014

Finding the midpoint

We viewed a video about 4 boys who drew two points, and a point in the middle. After that, we had to guess which person had the closest point in the middle. Furthermore, we had to back up these facts with why. I thought it was Chris because I thought his looked a lot more accurate, while the others were less precise.
This is Chris's guess, except without the coordinates. (It comes later) 
In the beginning, if I would want to know the exact midpoint of each one, and who got the closest I would need to know a lot of things. I would want to know the coordinates of each point, and want to measure the distance between each point with a formula. After, we talked about which one would be closest to the middle and why. I was the only person who guessed Chris, and when asked why, I just said that it looked that way. Someone then contradicted me by saying that his was too spread out, and I agreed. 

Afterwards, Ms. Ange showed us the exact coordinates, angles, and lengths, and we had to figure out a way to find the exact midpoint. My first reaction was to look at each information given and just guess to see which one was most accurate. For example, which one had the straightest angle, and which measurements were the most even. Then, when we had access to the internet, I decided to find the midpoint formula, and plug each person's lengths into it. I would then compare and subtract the guess and the actual midpoints, and see which ones were the most accurate. I found that Andrew's and Nathan's were both equally accurate. 

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for including the screenshot as it helps (a little bit!) explain what you were doing.

    I'm a little confused about your conclusion though.

    "...when we had access to the internet, I decided to find the midpoint formula, and plug each person's lengths into it. I would then compare and subtract the guess and the actual midpoints, and see which ones were the most accurate. I found that Andrew's and Nathan's were both equally accurate."

    What did you actually do here? Just subtract coordinate points from each other? What did you find? Andrew's and Nathan's were exactly equal? Can you elaborate on that?

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    1. Dear Ms. Ange,

      I looked up the midpoint formula, and plugged in each of the lengths. Upon plugging them in, I found that Andrew and Nathan were equally off in their estimates.

      Hope that makes more sense!

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  2. Hi Dana,
    Nice blog post! I really liked how you added a screen shot of chris and explained with detail the process we went through in class. My suggestion would be maybe adding a screenshot of the two that turned out to be the most accurate so the reader can compare them. I that also, that if you included the numbers you got after using the distance formula it would be easier to see how accurate each one was.

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    1. Thank you! and I agree with your suggestion, I'll work on that next time!

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