Thursday, 9 December 2010

Australian Curriculum Update

The latest draft can now be accessed at: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Mathematics/Curriculum/F-10

The general idea is that all the ministers have agreed on the content, yet they say there is some work yet to complete before it can be implemented. Queensland will implement it in some schools from next year.

Here are some recent reports in newspapers on the update:

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

What if the largest states had the biggest populations?

After reading one of Simon Job's posts on mathsclass.net, I started to think about population density. Using the following data from wikipedia:


















































State

Area (km2)



Population


Western Australia

2529875



6967200


Queensland

1730648



5297600


Northern Territory

1349129



4279400


South Australia

983482



2163200


New South Wales

800642



1601800


Victoria

227416



500001


Tasmania

68401



344200


Australian Capital Territory

2358



219900




 

Consider the following question:

  1. What is the population density of each of the states?

  2. What is the population density of the entire country?

  3. Why is the population density in each state different?

  4. If people were to be redistributed, so that the population density across Australia was consistent, how many people would live in each state?


How many people would live in Tasmania?

Application to Teaching This activity and these questions relate very nicely to ratios in Stage 4 Mathematics.