A graph appears on the board with no numbers, no labels, no title — just axes and a shape. Three questions, always in this order: what do you notice? what do you wonder? what story could this graph be telling? With no scale to lean on, shape is where the mathematics lives.
How we play
- Thirty seconds of silent looking. No hands yet.
- Notice only what is there: a crest, a repeat, a flat approach.
- Pitch a story — then point to the feature of the graph that each part of your story explains.
Three stories for one wave-shaped curve
- “The height of one seat on a Ferris wheel. Each crest is a pass over the top; the valleys are the loading platform.”
- “Water depth at a dock across two days — tide in, tide out, and the middle line is the depth the water keeps returning to.”
- “It is .” True to the shape, but a story with no characters. We sent it back for some.
One variation
A curve that creeps along near the axis, then climbs like it means it. A savings account left alone? A rumour spreading? The same picture your group will build in Folding Paper to the Moon — and the reason it never quite touches the axis is a feature worth noticing out loud.
Features have names
Amplitude, period, axis of the curve, asymptote, intercepts — using the right name for the right feature is half of every story; that vocabulary is the backbone of Sinusoidal Functions and The Exponential Function alike.