Full Parking Lot

Reflection:

The full parking lot task aligns with the Standard of Mathematical Practice 1: make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. It aligns with this standard because student can use several different methods to solve the problem. When I initially began this problem I hypothesized that there would be more cars in the parking lot, so I made that my starting point. When I found the maximum about of cars for the given values, I was able to dwindle my car amount down until I was able to find the correct amount of cars and motorcycles. I was able to test out my solution by creating equations to represent the amount of parking spots and tires and plotting these equations to find their point of intersection. The intersection of the two equations verified my solution of 13 cars and 7 motorcycles.

Finding equations to model the solution was a much easier solving method, but my initial method to solve challenged me in finding a pattern to create an equation from since two equations were necessary. I used more of a guess and check method to start this task, which made it a very low floor. Finding another method made this problem more challenging when it came to solving. This would be a great task to introduce systems as it introduces students into using a variety of parameters to solve a problem.

Based on the work I completed I found this task very easily accessible with a variety of different solving methods available to all students . To make this problem more engaging I would like to put it into context for the students and have them estimate general parameter for our parking lot and have the students see how closely their generalizations match the tires in the parking lot.

Source: https://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/mathematics/2016/rich/index.shtml#plan