11. Permutations, Combinations, and the Binomial Theorem
11.1 Permutations
Class Notes
The McGraw-Hill Ryerson PreCalculus 12 Text is used as the Main Resource.
Assignments in the Powerpoint Lesson Plans refer to pages and questions in the PreCalculus 12 text.
11.1A Fundamental Counting Principle and Factorial Notation new
Pedagogical Shifts: TRANSFORM, Moving from Traditional to Student Centered
Shifting from Content-based to Competencies Based
Shifting from Student as Knowledge Recipient to Student as Inquirer and Creator
Shifting from Memorization to Higher-level Thinking
Shifting from Topic driven to Cross-curricular themes
The website http://mono-1.com/monoface/main.html is a fun site that allows you to change features of a face to create a different monoface. The website states that there are 759, 375 possible faces.
I used this site as an inquiry based activity prior to teaching the fundamental counting principle. Students were asked to determine how the number of different faces of 759, 375 was calculated. The student's discussion of possible solutions was very active and they came up with a number of ideas. I introduced the fundamental counting principle using the Smart Notebook file as a strategy of solving a similar but simpler problem. Once they had the idea of FCP, they went back to the site and determined they needed to know how many choices there were for each of the different features. Students determined the expression to determine the 759, 375 faces. I stated that the number was incorrect. Of course they thought I was wrong and the website had to be correct, however, one of the students discovered why..... one face is wearing sunglasses so you can't see the eyes. This led us into determining how many possible faces there really are.
What I liked about this activity is that the student questions directed the lesson and we were able to cover all of the achievement indicators and concepts involving fundamental counting principle. When I continued the lesson with examples from my ppt , students were better prepared to provide correct solutions.