Aniekan Ebiefung, Ph.D

Goals

1. To broaden students' understanding of population and food supply problems in different countries.
2. To show how mathematics can be used to solve and or understand real life problems.
3. To involve students in research and discovery activities.

Rationale

Objectives

1. The student will be able to search for information about the population, landmass, and food supply of different countries on the Net.
2. The student will be able to represent the information collected pictorially and symbolically.
3. The students will be able to compute ratios and proportions based on the information obtained.
4. The student will be able to give interpretations and make sense of the ratios and proportions computed.

Methodology

1. The student search the Net for information regarding the population, land area, and annual food production of the countries selected by the student or by the teacher.
2. The student is guided to represent the information pictorially in different forms. For example, table, circle graph, and or bar graph can be used to represent the information.
3. The student is coached to compute different ratios:
   • Amount of food produced in tons divided by the land area.
   • Amount of food produced in tons divided by the population.
   • The land area divided by the number of people in the country.
4. The student computes different proportions: Assume USA is one of the countries in the study.
   • If the US ratios are considered as the base, how many people should live in the other countries so that there is a fair distribution of food?
   • Compute other proportions using the ratios from other countries and answer the question posed in (a).
5. Other Proportions: Divide the class into groups proportional to the population of the different countries.
   Example: Suppose there are four countries A, B, C, D with food/population ratios of a, b, c, d, and 25 students in the class. Then the number of students representing country A, denoted x, can be obtained from the equations a/(a+b+c+d) = x/25.

Questions

1. If Santa gives the class 75 bags of fruit candies, how many would each group have?
2. If your group have less fruit candies than other groups, how would you feel?
3. If your group have more fruit candies than other groups, how would you feel?
4. What factors affect the food production of different countries?
5. Give suggestions on ways to improve food production in different countries?