Sunday, February 8, 2015

Blog Post #2: What's Your Function

Carolyn Schneider
2/9/15

Blog Post #2
Part A
I found a periodical that gave the statistics for Marshawn Lynch’s rushing yards from 2007-2014.
The relationship is between the year and the rushing yards. Rushing yards are a function of year.
The function is not linear; if it were graphed, it would rise and fall depending on how many yards Marshawn rushed that year. In other words, the slope, or rate of change, is not constant. There is no given formula that would result in these values.
The function is not a mathematical model because the outputs (rushing yards) do not depend on the inputs (year).

Part B
Next, I found a graph of the decline of China’s economy.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21618913-after-sharp-slowdown-stimulus-back-agenda-test-will

There are three relationships to look at: property sales, investment, and industrial production. They’re graphed over a period of time (x axis), in changing percentages from 2009 to 2014. So this shows the relationship between time and the percentage of change in the Chinese economy.
The relationship is not a function, because each year has multiple outputs.



7 comments:

  1. Your table of Lynch's running yards is a great function example. Also, a good explanation of how the graph would look as well.

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  2. It's interesting of how the Chinese economy is declining, I thought it was doing better.

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  3. Your table is a really good example of a function and it's so interesting to see.

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  4. I like your use of football examples! It is a relevant topic since the Super Bowl was just recently on tv!

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  5. I think that your graph of the different areas of the Chinese economy may be considered a function... There are multiple lines being graphed on one graph, but they each represent a different set of information. What are your thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. brenna,

      good observation! =] the second example shows the relationship of three separate functions.

      professor little

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  6. carolyn,

    your first example is done well and nice job of using a sports example! the only thing missing in your explanation is to express the relationship using function notation.

    your second example shows three separate relationships that are functions of time. so it is not a non function.

    professor little

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