In an effort to share more of my resources through this blog, here’s another installment.

This time I’m sharing a little worksheet that I created called Guess Who? It’s a short activity–a warm up, or an exit card–and students should be able to do it in 5 minutes or so. I do this in my Precalculus class at the beginning of the year, but depending on the timing and the context, it could be appropriate in an Algebra 2 or Calculus class as well.

The functions and the questions have a one-to-one correspondence and there is a unique solution to the worksheet.

These 12 functions might seem a bit strange, but they are the “12 basic functions” named by our Precalculus textbook authors.

Here are two additional activities that can go with a discussion of functions and their properties:

1. I have all the functions printed out on 8.5″x11″ paper and backed with colored paper so they look nice. I get twelve volunteers to go up to the front and hold the functions. Then we can play all sorts of games. We can ask all the functions that have an asymptote to step forward. We can ask all the odd functions to step forward. Which functions are bounded? Which functions are always increasing? Which functions have a range of all real numbers? But we can also play a guessing game: A student in the audience picks a function and writes it down without telling everyone. The other students in the audience ask yes-no questions about their function, like “Is your function continuous for all real numbers?” Each time, functions that don’t qualify step back and only a few functions remain. This is repeated until the chosen function is the only one that remains.
2. Another fun game idea comes from one of my colleagues. I love this: Have a bunch of “name tags” made up for all your students. The name tags will be one of the 12 basic functions and students will wear these on their backs, without knowing what their function is. They then have to walk around the room and ask other students yes-no questions about the features of their function until they can identify which function they are. I think I’ve played a version of this with celebrities or something. But it’s perfect for the math classroom, too!

Okay, that’s my contribution to the MTBoS for the day :-).