Last Minute BOB... probably won't count...

Haha so until today I had completely forgot about the math test I missed on Friday and realized when i arrived at school today that I would be doing this test today. SO i decided I should write my BOB now... it may not count cuz oif the super lateness of it, but I'm gonna do it just in case.

All right, so Conics is one crazy unit. Started out learning about the ancient Japanese art from Samurai Kuro Pat Wa and all the different shapes you can form from cutting a cone. A cone is basically if you took a line and just spun it around. From here you can cut out 4 shapes. You can cut out a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, and a hyperbola. Each one is different.

Some commonalities include:

• Vertices
• Foci
• Focal Radii
• Locuses (Loci?) of points

Equations to remember~

Parabola:

• (x-h)^2=4p(y-k) (vertical parabola)
• (y-k)^2=4p(x-h) (horizontal parabola)
• (h,k)=Vertex
• p=distance from vertex to directrix or a focal point

Circle:

• (x-h)^2+(y-k)^2=r^2
• r=radius
• (h,k)=center

Ellipse:

• ((x-h)^2/a^2)+ ((y-k)^2/b^2)=1 *horizontal*
• ((y-k)^2/a^2]+[(x-h)^2/b^2)=1 *vertical*
• a=semimajor axis
• b=semiminor axis
• c= distance from center to foci
• (h,k)=center

Hyperbola:

• ((x-h)^2/a^2)-((y-k)^2/b^2)=1 *horizontal*
• ((y-k)^2/a^2)-((x-h)^2/b^2)=1 *vertical*
• a= transverse axis
• b= conjugate axis
• c= distance to foci
• (h,k)=center

My struggles:

• Have had some trouble in identifying vertical/horizontal in some instances.
• Sometimes get confused between the ellipse and hyperbolic equations.
• Issues with completing the square.

But I have done some looking over things this weekend and, all in all, this un it is not extremely difficult and so hopefully I will do quite well on it. Next period here I come!

~ Pokemon Champion

~B~O~B~ of a Champ!... ( A Pokemon Champ)

Well this is a late post but I've been busy tonight so... sorry... :(

Anyways... I guess it's pretest tomorrow and test on Friday so.. I'm a little apprehensive but we'll see how things go! Haha.

Things to know~

Permutations: Order matters!!!!!! nPr or 'n pick r'

Combinations: Order DOES NOT matter!!! nCr or 'n choose r'

And throwing this in so we never forget can't hurt either.... A LOGARITHM IS AN EXPONENT! ( this is not actually relevant to the test but I figured I would throw it in anyways)

And remember, if you get excited about certain numbers that u see, don't use an exclamation mark to emphasize your excitement because that really means FACTORIAL~

Factorial means: n*(n-1)*(n-2)*(n-3)....*3*2*1

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF COUNTING: If there are M ways to do one thing and N ways to do another, then there are M*N ways to do both things!

ALSO REMEMBER THE BINOMIAL THEOREM AND PASCAL'S TRIANGLE!!

I have had trouble with:

Knowing when it's nCr nPr

Knowing how to manipulate the numbers into these fine equations.

Our latest Homework about hte poker, although I think I've got it now!

Simple mistakes here and there.

Getting sleep haha but whatever. It's not like I NEED it....
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As usual, tips for the test!

1. STUDY STUDY STUDY!!

2. If you don't get it, don't feel ashamed to ask for help. We're all friends here in Pre-Cal 40S Winter 09 ! ;)... except maybe for Anthony... jk haha ... You're Awesome Anthony!

3. Eat right, exercise, and live a healthy lifestyle!

4. Maybe don't hit up TYC on Thursday night with your fake ID and party until 3 in the morning.... just a suggestion... (because clearly we ALWAYS do this kinda thing...)

5. Relax, stress makes it harder to think!

6. If all else fails when writing the test, just guess! You may get part marks for work shown and you might even get the right answer! Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Well, that's all this Pokemon Champion has for one night... As usual Good luck on the test... How hard can it be to count, right??

Hahaha hello... sorry.. i guess i suck for being late but here's the basic timeline for Kale and I's project!

May 1 to 7- Create and add pizazz to question 1 and with luck create question 2.

May 8to 14- Finalize question 2 and add some more pizazz to it and (once again with luck) Create and hopefully even start to jazz up question 3!

May 15 to 21- Finish up question 3, Create 4 and hopefully start the 'zazzage!

May 22 to 28- Finish up question 4 and Create 5! (Possibly make it awesome as well?)

May 29 to June 6- Finalize question 5... add final pieces of zazz to entire project... With luck throw a 6th question on there for some mathematical icing on our developed expert cake! ( Idc how lame it is... haha)

June 7- FINAL DUE DATE ( yeah it's the last possible day, so sue me...us... whatever)

(8) I Wanna Be, The Very Best... NOT!

Math-ew's Super Awesome Scribe Post

Hey Pre-Cal 40-S Winter 2009! This is Matthew Aka Pokemon Champion (though apparently Mr. K's son may have something to say about that... bring it Mr. K Junior... Just kidding =D)

Anywayyyyys... today we started off class with Mr. K very likely confusing or scaring our parents by implementing use of the "yackpack" tool on the blog. he first announced who we were ( We come in peace?) and then we all just sorta started to laugh, and now some of our parents are wondering why they are suddenly the stars of a latest sitcom ( My Child the Precal Student, perhaps?)

Ah, but I digress, back to the math! After our excitement died down a bit, the slideshow appeared, in all it's magical Smart Board glory. A very similar premiere slide appeared today, now with a new caption. Today we were to delve into the wonder that is solving trigonometric equations! (really this time).

We started out with some fairly simple questions reminiscent of the day before. Determine trigonometric values and come to an exact value as an answer. Here are the questions along with some straight-forward solutions.

Something Mr. K touched upon was the concept that we don't exactly NEED to rationalize the denominator anymore as far as radicals go. No matter where you put the radical, it's still there. and sometimes it's probably even more handy to eliminate radicals from the numerator and have them all on the denominator, but I used the answer where we do rationalize radicals in the denominator. Heavy stuff...

We then had a bit of a mental math jamboree! Or, just a mental math quiz, about SohCahToa/ChoShaCao of certain angles. It was out of 10 and it seemed like a big problem was the last question resulting in an answer of "undefined". Always make sure to check when you have 1/0 or 0/1 because their meanings are quite different..

Yesterday we had also started to talk about phi, or if the symbol interests you at all. Phi as a refresher, is just another fun Greek letter/symbol (huzzah for the Greeks!) meaning the related angle of "theta". Today we started investigating the use of it a little bit more.

Now we started doing questions using the inverse, or arc, trigonometric functions. For each given value, we should end up with 2 different angles (except of course, in the case of 90,180.270, and 360 degrees.) To spice things up a little bit - solving for the angles in radians. I won't bother with the first question of the type because it's basically a question we all know and love using a common sin value on the unit circle. For those who need it, the answers result in Pi/4 or 3Pi/4.

It was after this question that "Phi" came in.

Here are the 2 questions we solved using phi:
Next up, we took a look at some good old fashioned algebraic equations.These should have been easily solved, and were somewhat of a break from the slightly more difficult concepts we are trying to grip now. Checking the slide for this one should be more than enough of a refresher for everybody, but i put it here as well just in case. Our last slide for the day was almost a carbon copy of this one except now it incorporated trig functions. Now (trig function)x= 1/2 or 1/3 rather than just x. These questions are solved in the same way as with the phi questions previously shown. Rather than give you the answers here, i think it would be quite prudent for you all to just try to figure the last slide out combining our knowledge from slides 4 and 5 with slide 6 and seeing what you can do as far as that goes.

Last bits of info! Today Mr. K taught us a handy trick to do with our TI-83/84 calculators ( as well as revealing the secret of the almighty TI-89, but let's not get too excited). After you have some sort of number you want stored into memory, you can press the STO key, then the GREEN ALPHA KEY followed by a letter of your choice (although X is NOT advised due to its use in other areas in the calcualtor). He then went on to tell us that our entire calculators will be wiped before the exam and that, not even our fun puzzle games would survive... tear tear :(

Homework for tonight was Exercise 4 Q's 1-10, and any 5 of the last 10.

It was also suggested that we draw unit circles and to use lots of colour. He mentioned how important colour is and how it can help us remember things, such as how we recognize yellow early on but not to rely on it because its a very bright and hard to read colour. Anyways sorry for the lateness.... REALLY lateness... Computer kept freezing up and had no notes so kind of had to wing it.. But excuses are lame and i'll try to manage my time better next time. Hopefully This helped some people out... it wasn't as awesome as I intended it to be but what can ya do?

NEXT SCRIBE ISSSSSS: *unnecessary drum roll* REBECCA!!! Congratz!! XD Good night every one, and happy mathing! =D