I was reading the news on yahoo.com yesterday and came across two articles I can use in my classroom to show some real live math problems.
The first involved a young lady who took a taxi cab from the station to the restaurant, a jaunt of about two miles. She used a credit card to pay for it and the taxi driver ran the transaction and added quite a tip so the total was close to $800. I can ask them how much was the actual taxi ride per mile and what percent was the tip the taxi driver gave himself. I can have them figure out cost per tenth of a mile. This opens up some nice discussion.
The other story was about a Chinese land developer in China who purchased a one year old full blooded Tibetan Mastiff for 1.9 million US dollars. He paid 12 million yen. This means I can have students figure out the exchange rate, $ per pound, percent above the normal price of a Tibetan Mastiff in the US.
Lots of possibilities and each one would make a great warm-up with the material and questions. I will have to keep an eye on the newspaper for various warm-up ideas like this.
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