This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: The sums of three whole numbers taken in pairs are 12, 17, and 19. What is the middle number?...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: This task will investigate the intersection points of the circle $C$ of radius 1 centered at $(0,0)$ and different lines passing through the point $(0,...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: The following is a student solution to the inequality \frac{5}{18} - \frac{x-2}{9} \leq \frac{x-4}{6}. \begin{align} \frac{5}{18} - \frac{x-2}{9} & \le...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Enrico has learned a geometric technique for ''completing the square'' to find the solutions of quadratic equations. To solve the equation $x^2 + 6x + ...

The problem presents a context where a quadratic function arises. Careful analysis, including graphing, of the function is closely related to the context. The student will gain valuable experience applying the quadratic formula and the exercise also gives a possible implementation of completing the square.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Michelle, Hillary, and Cory created a YouTube video, and have a plan to get as many people to watch it as possible. They will each share the video with...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Let $a$ and $b$ be real numbers with $a>b>0$ and $\frac{a^3-b^3}{(a-b)^3}=\frac{73}{3}$. What is $\frac{b}{a}$?...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: For 70 years, Oseola McCarty earned a living washing and ironing other people’s clothing in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although she did not earn much mo...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: A company uses two different-sized trucks to deliver concrete blocks. The first truck can transport $x$ blocks per trip, and the second can transport $...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: The profit, $P$ (in thousands of dollars), that a company makes selling an item is a quadratic function of the price, $x$ (in dollars), that they charg...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Given the height $h$ and volume $V$ of a certain cylinder, Jill uses the formula r=\sqrt{\frac{V}{\pi h}} to compute its radius to be 20 meters. If a s...

The purpose of this task is to help students interpret signed numbers in a context as a magnitude and a direction and to make sense of the absolute value of a signed number as its magnitude.

This task examines, from a mathematical and statistical point of view, how scientists measure the age of organic materials by measuring the ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12. The focus here is on the statistical nature of such dating. This task addresses a very important issue about precision in reporting and understanding statements in a realistic scientific context.

This task is a refinement of ``Carbon 14 dating'' which focuses on accuracy. Because radioactive decay is an atomic process modeled by the laws of quantum mechanics, it is not possible to know with certainty when half of a given quantity of Carbon 14 atoms will decay. This type of question is very important in science and it also provides an opportunity to study the very subtle question of how errors behave when applying a function: in some cases the errors can be magnified while in others they are lessened.

This problem involves solving a system of algebraic equations from a context: depending how the problem is interpreted, there may be one equation or two.

This task is a somewhat more complicated version of "Accurately weighing pennies I'' as a third equation is needed in order to solve part (a) explicitly. Instead, students have to combine the algebraic techniques with some additional problem-solving (numerical reasoning, informed guess-and-check, etc.)

The purpose of this task is to study some patterns in a small addition table. Each pattern identified persists for a larger table and if more time is available for this activity students should be encouraged to explore these patterns in larger tables.

The problem statement describes a changing algae population as reported by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. In part (a), students are expected to build an exponential function modeling algae concentration from the description given of the relationship between concentrations in cells/ml and days of rapid growth (F-LE.2).