Portfolio of Pit and Pendgulum

Portfolio

Alex Charles

November 2, 2017

In the story Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe, there is a man in a prison. Above the prisoner, hanging from the roof, is a pendulum with a very sharp blade attached to it. After every swing period of the pendulum, it lowers closer to the prisoner. The pendulum has 12 periods of swings left until it will hit the man and kill him. He notices that rats are biting the ropes that are keeping him tied up. Will the rats have enough time to save him? We needed to figure out some details like the weight of the pendulum, the length of the rope that's holding the pendulum, and the amplitude of the pendulum.

Standard Deviation:

The exact definition of standard deviation is: “a quantity calculated to indicate the extent of deviation for a group as a whole.” (Dictionary.com). In simpler terms, that means finding the exact middle of all the numbers in one group. The steps to calculate standard deviation are:

Add up all your numbers in the group and divide that total by the amount of numbers in the group. (mean)

With that mean you minus the mean from the original numbers you have

After that you square the numbers you got from step 2.

After you have the number you add the new numbers all up and divide the numbers by the total.

After that you square root the total you have.

Graphing summary:

In order to change the linear function up or down, you need to change where the line crosses the Y axis (Y intercept). In order to change the steepness of the graph, you must change the slope in your equation. If your number is greater than one then the line will go up and if the number is less than 0 your line goes down. Subtracting B would shift it to the right and if you add B it will shift to the left. To make a quadratic function shift up or down you must Subtract or Add the C value. When you subtract the C value, the x intercept of the graph will go left. If you add the C value the x-intercept shifts to the right.

Key Activity Normal distribution:

What the graphs “What's your stride”, ”Time is relevant” and “Pulse analysis” all have in common is that each one of those graphs uses bar graphs instead of line graphs. Another thing that makes all the graphs the same is that we tested them ourselves and got our own data for the graphs. On the activity What's Normal p153, it takes normal distribution and applies it to real life situations and how you might use this in later life.

Key activity Percentages on the bell curve:

The goal of pages 156 and 157 was to figure out from a bell curve what is rare and what is not rare. From the bell curve percentages, we found out that A was 68% and B was 95%. We found these values by making educated guesses. We realized that if something is not in the 95 percentile or within two standard deviations it was a rare amount in the activity. In the activity “can your calculator pass the soft drink test”, we did activities that focused on finding the amount of a quantity and deciding which are rare