Thou-Shalt-Not Indulge in the Consumption of Soda

             Mayor Bloomberg is leading a charge to ban the selling of obnoxiously large sodas at venues such as movie theaters and ballparks (but he is not eliminating their sale from grocery stores and their ilk).  The proposed ban has lead to a heated controversy about the role of government and what it should and should not be regulating as well as the purpose for laws and taxation.  While the relationship between a ban on soda and the math classroom or even school in general might not be immediately apparent upon closer inspection it is evident that there are correlations between the two and there are most certainly ways to learn from the ban when considering one’s own classroom.

            As I discussed in my last post the most obvious connection is the using bans in the classroom and as a future math teacher I will be implementing a ban on calculators except when I want to utilize them to help students visualize graphs and relate them to concept and even then I am not sure if I will let them use calculators or use computer programs or draw on the board or give them models, which I provide.  Students will undoubtedly argue they will always have a calculator on them as phones now work as basic calculators so why shouldn’t they have a calculator in class? It’s not as if they’ll ever do basic math in real life anyways (LIES! LIES! LIES! Basic math is a vital life skill!)?  The rationale behind my ban and how it relates to the soda ban is that while it might not be a particularly popular rule it is, in my opinion, in their best interest if they don’t become reliant on calculators so though my students might not see it, I am indeed looking out for their best interests just as Mayor Bloomberg is.  In the spirit of the numerous loopholes and ways to work around the New York soda ban I suggested that I might allow abacuses, a 2000s BC calculator, and this still holds true.  Another potential loophole is that some material will need a calculator for students to make substantial improvements such as trigonometric functions in which case I will need to ease up on my restrictions, but for less complex work the ban will hold true (Muchas gracias to Pete for forcing me to recognize my oversimplification of calculator usage!).  Most hipster math class in America? The World?

            Reading comments and opinion articles related to the ban it is evident that portion size is a major issue in our culture and schooling is not preparing our youth to understand portion sizes and make healthy decisions.  Outside of health class, math might be the subject most responsible for this lack of understanding.  In geometry classes when discusses 3-dimensional objects I believe it would be useful for teachers to include not only the usual objects like cones and cylinders but also food related objects like cups, food packaging and portions.  The notion that increase a box’s size by 10% in each direction increases the volume by 33.1% (1.1*1.1*1.1=1.331) is not intuitively evident to many people.  Pierre Chandon a French marketing professor demonstrated how unaware most consumers are on the size of three dimensional objects when he asked 294 people to estimate the size of three different bottles and they routinely guessed wrong, underselling the volume by 20-40 percent (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/how-can-a-big-gulp-look-so-small/?ref=magazine).  Working with food in geometry to better understand volume and 3-dimensional objects not only educates students on portion sizes, but also can be more interesting and relatable to students who might otherwise not see the importance of many geometry topics.


Smorgasbord Fun Fact: Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds!