Connecting MATH to Our Lives Project 1999- Biographies

Connecting Math: Biographies

In a global networking project students are eager to share information about themselves and learn about the lives of their newly-found distant friends. Students in the math project introduced themselves by telling the story of their life through numbers. In the math autobiographies students use numeric data to tell others on the network about themselves, their families, and the towns or countries in which they live.

In the following examples we share the work of students from School 9 and School 10, Focsani, Romania. One example is from a student who tells the story of his family through numbers. The other examples show how students collaborated in writing the "biography" of their country through numbers.

Math Autobiography

My name is Mircea Merchea. I was born in Focsani in 1988. At the age of 4 I went for the first time to the kindergarden. I spent 3 years in the kindergarden. At the age of 7 I went to school. I'm now in the 4th grade and I have 33 classmates, 16 boys and 18 girls. I have only 1 brother, he is 13 years old and he is in the 7th grade. I have 3 cousins, 1 grandma and 2 grandfathers, 2 aunts and 2 uncles. I live in a flat with 3 rooms in a block of 4 floors at 1, Teiului Steet. My father is an engineer and he is 43 years old and my mother is a doctor and she is 42 years old.

Mircea Merchea
School 9, Focsani, Romania

Romania, Our Country

Background to the Activity

Students from School 10 Focsani, Romania wrote this Math Biography about their country. They made some Math collages with a Romanian map for our partners from Spain, Honolulu and Florida, USA with a view to creating a link between Geography and Math. They have included some units of measure, both American and European. For example, they have created pairs with kilometers and miles. First they collected the data expressed in European units of measure and then they transformed them to American units in order to be understood by their colleagues from the Math Project. Therefore, they are explaining below what they learnt about the Math relations between each pair of unit measures.

Romania is a territory marked by the 45th parallel of Northern latitude, a line of equilibrium and harmony to be equally traced in the natural and human landscape. Romania is the largest country in South -East Europe. The number 3 marks our country's destiny: a 3rd of the relief is mountainous, a 3rd is highland and a third is the Romanian plain. Three countries formed Romania today: Transylvania, Valachia and Moldavia. Our country also represents 3 bridges: to Central Europe in the North west; to the Balkan and Turkey in the South; and to the countries of the former Soviet Union in the East.

Cãtãlina Burgã & Ionut Trif

Romania has the shape of a peasant's round loaf of bread with relief forms displayed in slowly, descending circular steps. Huge mountains, rich hills covered by orchards and vineyards, and fertile fields are delimited by the crown of the Carpathians and by the biggest continental river, the Danube. The splendid Danube Delta is a paradise of vegetation, birds, fishes, loneliness. At the beginning of time, Ovid, exiled to the Black Sea (8A.D. -18A.D.) said, "A man who comes here is destined to die here, and die happy even against his will".

Oana Sãcãlus & Cãtãlina Iordan

The total area of Romania is about 237,500 sq. km, about 91,700-sq. mi. My country is roughly oval in shape, like a heart, with a maximum distance east to west of about 740 km, about 460 mi., and north to south about 475 km, about 295 mi.

Cosmin Tãnase

Climate: The Transylvanian Basin, the Carpathian Mountains, and the western lowlands have warm summers and cold winters with recorded temperature extremes ranging between 37.8 C (100 F) and -31.7 C (-25 C). The Walachian, Moldavian and Dobrujan lowlands have hotter summers and occasionally experience periods of severe cold in winter. Rainfall averages 508 mm (20 in) on the plains and from 508 mm to 1016 mm (20 in to 40 in) on the mountains and is concentrated in the warmer half of the year.

Otilia Stanciu & Cãtãlina Stoica

Plants and Animals: Wooded steppe, now largely cleared for agriculture, is predominant in the plains of Walachia and Moldova. Fruit trees are common in the foothills of the mountains. On the lower slopes are found forests of such deciduous trees as birch beech and oak. The forests of the higher altitudes are coniferous, consisting largely of pine and spruce trees. Above the timberline (approximately 1750 m/5740 ft), the flora is alpine.

Rãzvan Neacsu & Octavian Rachieru

Population: Romanians, who constitute 89% of the total population, are descendants of the peoples inhabiting Dacia. Important minorities are the Hungarians, who comprise about 8% of the population and are chiefly settled in Transylvania; and Germans, who make up about 1.5% of the population and live chiefly in the Banat. Romania also has small minorities of Ukrainians, Gypsies, Jews, Russians, Serbs, Croats, Turks, Bulgarians, Tatars and Slovaks.

Population Characteristics: The population of Romania (1990 estimate) was 23,168,000. Population density was about 98 persons per sq. km (about 253 per sq. mi.). The population was about 49% rural.

Oana Dumitrache & Livia Talasman

Political Divisions: For administrative purposes, the country is divided into 40 districts and the municipality of Bucharest. Bucharest is the capital and largest city of Romania, with a population of 1,989,800 (1990 estimate), and it is also the prime industrial and commercial center of the country.

Alexandru Grosu

Education: Primary education in Romania is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 7 and 15, and most students choose to continue their education beyond the age of 18. In the late 1990s some 3 million children were enrolled in Romania's 13,900 primary schools.

Cristinel Sebe

Economy: Primarily agricultural before World War II, the Romanian economy was subsequently transformed through a series of 5-year plans and is now dominated by manufacturing. In the late 1990s Western analysts estimated the gross national product (GNP) at $151.3 billion, or about $6570 per capita. After the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime in December 1989, the domestic economy virtually collapsed, and exports plummeted. Economic reform programs introduced in 1990 called for devaluation of the currency, removal of subsidies on most consumer goods, and privatization of state-owned companies in order to move Romania toward a free-market system. The basic monetary unit of Romania is the leu, divided into 100 bani; the leu was devalued in October 1998 to an official rate of 10,000 equal U.S. $1.

Ana- Maria Ene & Monica Dima

Transportation: Romania has about 11,275 km (about 7005 mi.) of railroad track and about 72,800 km (about 45,235 mi.) of roads.

The Regime Changes: Ceausescu's brutal suppression of antigovernment demonstrations in Timisoara turned the army against him. In June 1993 Romania received a formal invitation for European Union membership.

Maria Dumitru

What did you learn?

AD or A. D. is the Christian era, "Anno Domini" in the year of the Lord.

The kilometer is a metric unit of linear measure equal to 1,000 meters, 3,280.8 feet or about 5/8 miles.

Inch, a unit of linear measure, is equal to 1/12 foot, 2.54 cm or a unit of pressure as measured by a barometer or manometer, equal to the pressure balanced by the weight on a one- inch column of liquid, usually mercury.

Foot is a unit of linear measure equal to12 inches or 1/3 yard (0.3048 meters) while a square kilometer is a unit of surface measure equal to 1,000,000 square meters.

A Celsius scale degree, used in Romania and Europe, has 0 degrees as the freezing point and 100 Celsius degrees is the boiling point of water. The formula for converting a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit is Degrees F= 9/5 Celsius degrees +32.

Percentage is a given part or amount in every hundred.