JackB


JackB My favorite part of math is algebra because you have to show your work.

 

Survival of the Fittest

 

by Jack Barnett

 

Body of Story: I had escaped the plastic prison and was out ofCONSTANT terror. I was in the school gardens when a jar came down on my face suddenly. I was at the BASE . The giant captor called Jesse said, “ you’ll be a nice snack for my praying mantis, little cricket.” It was true I was a cricket, but I was not a small one at all (40 weeks old 4 Australian TERMS). I noticed the top had no holes, and that was the last thought I had before I blacked out.

 

I woke up to the chirping of crickets, katydids and grasshoppers urging me to get up. Their chirping was getting EXPONENTIALLY louder. Suddenly, they all flew or jumped away, and a dark shape loomed up. I jumped away and barely missed his lighting fast claws.  I had heard stories about this beast; it was called the praying mantis. I didn’t understand the praying part because I was certainly doing more praying than he was. I EVALUATED  the EQUATION: how long would it take for him to get to me? I broke out of my trance of horror and escaped the praying mantis. The praying mantis went back to his lair to settle for a day old grasshopper. As I looked around, I noticed I was in another steel trap with almost impossible chances of escaping.  Thinking algebraically, I calculated my chances of escape.  Using COEFFICIENTS, VARIABLES and LIKE TERMS,  I expressed my result in SCIENTIFIC NOTATION.  It was difficult for me, a grasshopper, to write SUPERSCRIPTS and SUBSCRIPTS, so I wrote the scientific notation out in an EXPANDED FORM: 2 X 10 to the 23rd power against.

 

Night fell, and I watched as the leader DISTRIBUTED provisions. The leader was creature of great  POWER -- a grasshopper who was almost as large as Jesse’s  praying mantis, Apollo. In the morning, our troops SIMPLIFIED our situation by retreating to the Southwest corner and building a wall.  We were going to make our last stand. Our leader’s face was without EXPRESSION.

 

The next day was the day of truth, whether we would die or live. Our encampment was on high ground, surrounded by  a 20 inch high pile of various sticks and pebbles put together with mud and clay: our humble SUBSTITUTE for a wall. The invader had climbed to the top when we launched our pebbles at Apollo. He dodged all of them easily. Our leader, Juan, was lighting a torch on fire when he struck it to himself and flew straight at Apollo. Juan was on fire, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. Apollo and Juan collided and both screamed in agony and pain. My last image of Juan was him falling to the ground with a triumphant look in his face. Our medics immediately took him away. We all knew Juan would never lead us again. However, Juan’s attempt to protect us was in vain. Apollo was injured but not dead. I ran to the medical bay, to Juan’s death bed. He was covered in burns and scars. He spoke in a waning and wavering voice: “You shall lead our people. I have faith in you that you will defeat Apollo and escape this torturous cavern; I have faith.”              

 

EPILOGUE

 

We all had faith from that point on. We sharpened our spears and went to war. We lost many of our group including women, children, the elderly and men. But in these deaths our remaining comrades gained a new life: freedom. When Jesse, our evil captor, saw his pet destroyed he was crestfallen, and he let all of us go, having no more use for mantis food.    

 

 

 

Vocabulary:

 

constant- a quantity having a fixed value that does not change or vary, such as a number

 

base- the part under an exponent

 

exponent- a small number placed to the upper-right of a number that shows the number of times the base number is multiplied by itself

 

evaluate- to evaluate an expression means to find a numerical value for it, to “work it out.”

 

equation - a mathematical statement containing an equals sign, to show that two expressions are equal

 

distribute - to spread out equally

 

power - the power shows how many times the base is multiplied by itself

 

simplify - to simplify a fraction, reduce the numerator and denominator in a fraction to the smallest numbers possible.  To simplify an expression, remove brackets, unnecessary terms and numbers.

 

expression - one or a group of mathematical symbols representing a number or quantity.  An expression may include numbers, variables, constants, operators and grouping symbols.

 

substitute - to put a number in place of a letter

 

variable - a quantity that can change or vary

 

coefficient - a number that multiplies a variable  

 

like term - a term containing 2 variables which have the same letters  

 

term - a single number, a variable or a number and a variable    

 

subscript - a character set, printed or written, below and immediately to one side of another.

 

superscript - a character set, printed or written, above and immediately to one side of another.

 

scientific notation - a way of writing very large or very small numbers using a number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of ten.

 

expanded form - a way to write numbers by adding the value of its digits.  Example:  1000 + 900 + 50 + 4 = 1954

 

 

 

 

 

See my G-Doc at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AOa83ftDqj5NcKZLIyOEBh7BdDn4c4QHXjeyB9fLUYg/edit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 After Sales Tax=9132.10

 After Interest=9350.36

 Monthly Payments=155.84                                                                                                                               

 After Sales Tax=106425  After Intrest=108968.56 Monthly Payments= 

 

Bar Charts:

 

 

Mean = 11.473...

Median = 11

Mode = 11

 

Pie Chart

(I decided to combine shades of a color to be one color so some parts were bigger than others.  For example, "Duke blue," "dark blue," and "aqua" all were "blue.")