Composite function memes.

Over the holidays, I ran into a really awesome use of memes in math.  As most teachers are aware, some students find it difficult to visualize what is happening when they learn composition of functions.  I usually end up using lots of parenthesis, white boards, and sticky notes to physically move one function into the other so students have a kinesthetic way to do it but some still struggle.  

I check Twitter for ideas I can use in the classroom to help students learn math better.  One beautiful meme I saw absolutely capsulized the composite functions of f(g(x)) and g(f(x)).  The idea is to set up two pictures, one as f(x) and the other as g(x) as I’ve done at the top of the meme.  Then one creates a picture by inserting the g(x) photo into the f(x)photo and vice versa to show the f(g(x)) and g(f(x)).

I saw several and tried it myself.  Other than taking a bit of time to find the photos, find a meme maker that was easy to follow and then put it all together, it wasn’t that hard. I’ll share how I did it and which programs I used to do it.  There are probably easier ways to do memes but I wanted four different pictures to use in one meme.

First, I went to Pixabay which is a website with tons of free photos that anyone can use.   I selected two photos, one of a frozen bubble and the other of a can of soda with a circled pattern with it. Using Preview on my Mac, I selected the parts of the photos I wanted to use for the composition and saved those separately.

Second, I used Kapwing to create four different memes because it allowed me to create four different scenes.  Normally, it would allow me to string them together with voice over to make an animated gif but I just wanted the individual memes.  This web based free program allowed me to I took screenshots of each scene so I’d have a photo of each one. 

For the final step, I created the whole meme using imgflip which allowed me to combine all four scenes into one meme with titles and everything. I might have been able to do it all in one or the other but the Kapwing allowed me to create the individual parts and imgflip let me put the four together.  

Both programs were fairly intuitive so I could easily manage it without much difficulty.  I did have to undo things a few times but overall, it was easy and it took about one period to make the whole thing from start to finish and learn new programs. I  hope this helps you figure out how to do things.  Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear.  Have a great day.