The Mathematical Model of Me project was a great way to kick off the year. In this project, we found a picture that represented us and turned the picture into line segments that we could plot based off points. Then we took each benchmark of the project and improved our work until it became a work of art. There was a few purposes to the project. First of all, it was a great way to get to know a little bit about each other in the beginning of the year. We also learned about line segments and the math program Geogabra.
To start off this project, we first found a picture that represented ourselves. Since I enjoy traveling and the ocean, I chose a picture of a lighthouse and a sail boat. The lighthouse in the picture reminded me of South Carolina where all my family is from because back there, there are a whole lot of them. Here is a picture of the photo I chose
To start off this project, we first found a picture that represented ourselves. Since I enjoy traveling and the ocean, I chose a picture of a lighthouse and a sail boat. The lighthouse in the picture reminded me of South Carolina where all my family is from because back there, there are a whole lot of them. Here is a picture of the photo I chose
Then what we did was find important points/lines in the photo and graph them on a separate piece of graph paper. This was to get an idea of what our final draft would look like. The graph paper had to be scaled on a Cartesian Plane. This way we had specific points we could later graph on Geogabra. You can see the scale on mine was each line on the graph was equivalent to a distance of 10. ( Instead of going 1, 2, 3 for each line, each line was 10, 20, 30) I made the scale 10 because then each of my points could be more exact when I inserted them onto Geogabra. Here is a picture of my 2nd Benchmark (The completed picture handwritten on graph paper)
You may notice that this picture looks different then the original image because there is an extra boat in the back. I added that boat to make the picture have more points and so that it is more challenging, because before I did not have enough points. (As suggested in a critique session in Benchmark 2) After the critique, we started Benchmark 3. Benchmark 3 consisted of taking the points that we found in Benchmark 2 and listing them in a program called Geogabra. Geogabra will automatically graph parings of points for you on the computer to make exact lines and detailed graphs. I really liked using Geogabra and I think that I adapted to it and learned it a lot faster than most people. To plot points and graph them on Geogabra, we used a spreadsheat and found the x values and the y values of each point. Then we wrote them all down in a row in Geogabra spreadsheet. After completing all of the given points in a single part of your image, you selected all the points that went together and went to the Polyline tool. This would plot all of your points with line segments creating your image. We also, some of us had to edit the aspect ratio of our Geogabra picture. The aspect ratio describes the ratio of scaling between x and y's. This could be challenging for some because if they waited to the end to change this, it could make their picture look weird. When I finished plotting all the points and creating the picture via Geogabra, we started Benchmark 4. Benchmark 4 was about creating a artsy and creative aspect to your picture. This gave it color and made it stand out. A challenge option for this Benchmark was to add color to your picture using Geogabra itself. Because of my fondness for Geogabra, I decided to use this option. To make the shapes in Geogabra, you had to make shapes the same size as your plotted points. You can change the color of the shape as well.(We utilized that ability in this project) Here is my final picture on Geogabra