Anne Isabelle Milbanke

           So, I'm going to guess you've never heard Anne Isabelle Milbanke...but that's okay because I didn't either before I researched her. She's actually a pretty interesting person. Her husband gave her the nickname of the "Princess of Parallelograms" before they got married. Ms.Milbanke got married to Lord George Gordon Byron on January 2, 1815, but that ended pretty quickly. About a month after the birth of their child Ada, on January 16, 1816, Lord and Lady Byron were separated. After that, Lady Byron made sure that Ada didn't turn out like her dad at all. She made sure that Ada found a love in math, like her mother. (The Lord was more of a poet.) Lady Byron herself adored math and contributed a lot to the math society. She died in 1860.

Finding the Area of Parallelograms...and Tennessee

        Today, I learned how to find the area of a parallelogram in class. It's pretty much the same exactly the same as the formula for the area of a square/rectangle. The formula for finding the area of a parallelogram (and a square and a rectangle) is: Area = base times height OR length times width (same thing). The reason that this is, is because a parallelogram is just a rectangle or square with triangles on the sides. After we learned this, we were also asked to find the dimensions of Tennessee and come up with a rough estimate of the state. Why are we doing this, you may ask? Because Tennessee is the one state that most resembles a parallelogram. So to find the dimensions, I Googled it and found that Tennessee is 440 miles long (l) and 120 miles wide (w). After that, I just plugged it into the formula.

                           A = l x w

                           A = 440 x 120

                           A = 52,800 square miles

        In addition to finding the rough estimate, we also had to compare it to the real area of Tennessee. So drumroll please.... The real area of Tennessee is... 42,416 square miles. That's a 10,654 square mile difference, but that's okay, because in reality, Tennessee isn't a perfect parallelogram, so of course, the answer's gonna be off a little. 

What I've Learned in Chapter 10

      So far, in chapter 10, I've learned a whole lot about circles and their measures. I've learned that there are more than just the 360 degrees inside and outside the circle. I now know that circles can have major and minor arcs, inscribed angles, tangents that are perpendicular to the radius, secents that intersect the circle in two points, and so much more. I know how to find the measures of all of these now as well. Some careers that use circles and their measurements are: carpenters and math teachers. At some point in their job span, carpenters will have to build a round table or a round window of some sort, and to match the measurements of what the buyer wants, they'd have to know how to work with circles. Math teachers use circles, usually in geometry, to teach students how to find the angles and whatnot. One question I still have is if we're working a problem with secents, and it's like theorem 10.12, where they might give us the arc measures, couldn't the angle inside just be one half of the given arc since it's inscribed? (Or is it even inscribed....?) If you didn't get my question, I'll just draw it out in class.