Math Beyond the Blackboard

Linden’s math and computer science students have been exploring a multiplicity of ways to use math and computer science to solve real-world problems — locally, globally and beyond as some set their sights on outer space.  Here are a few examples from Sang Lee’s classes.

Integrating Math and Art

Three Linden high school math students — Maya, Kailah and Alessandra — submitted their entries this week for the Desmos Math Art Competition, which looks for original art created using equations and a graphing calculator. 

Grade 12 student Maya’s entry can be found here. Best of luck to all entrants!  We look forward to sharing other entries and results in a future Voice! 

Screenshot of Grade 12 student Maya’s entry.

Using Computer Science to Help the Linden Community

Grade 11 Computer Science students used their knowledge of loops, conditionals, arrays, date subprogram, and DOM manipulation to create web applications that tell the user what rooms are free at Linden during certain periods. 

Click the students' names to see the programs created by Cassidy, Abby, Polly, Serena, Jemima, Sophia and Marlen. 

Grade 12 Computer Science students Alison, Annie, Kailah and Jazz were challenged to develop a program that would improve on Linden’s current interview-booking platform, and came up with LIBS (Linden Interview Booking System). They honed a number of real-world skills in the process including:

• Pitching LIBS  to Linden’s administrators, and persuading them of the program's advantages,
• Learning to code collaboratively,
• Finding work-arounds for security flaws.

Linden hoped to test LIBS with one of two classes during the latest round of Family/Faculty Interviews, however, due to the many last-minute changes related to re-opening the building, it wasn’t feasible this term.  

Using Math to Map the Stars 

In their study of the 3D Coordinate system, Grade 12 Calculus students are learning to plot, create 3D vectors, complete operations in 3D, create planes in 3D, and more.

Sang challenged students to find the nearest stars to the solar system using the star database, and then plot them in 3D using GeoGebra. Check out Kailah’s interactive example here. You can zoom in and out, and drag to rotate the coordinate system. The stars' distances are to scale.  

Kailah explains, “The red dot is our solar system. The rest are stars nearest to our solar system. They are all plotted using the 3D coordinate system (x,y,z).”

Screenshot of Kailah’s interactive example.

Coming Up: Social Justice Hackathon 

Also this month, Grade 12s Computer Science students are joining a social justice-based hackathon competition hosted by Starhacks, an international not-for-profit striving to create gender-inclusive spaces in computer science, breaking the stereotype of what it means to be a coder one hackathon at a time. The theme this year is building bridges. The competition is ongoing, and in a future edition, we will share more about how Alison, Annie, Kailah and Jazz represented Linden as a team and their social justice-based application.