Creating Art in Math

We decided to let our students demonstrate some of their creative abilities for our inverse assessment in MCR 3U. The key skills we covered were
- what is an inverse?
- relationship between domain and range of a function and its inverse
- relationship between any point on a function and the corresponding point on the inverse
- relationship between the transformations applied to a function and the corresponding transformation on the inverse

Instead of assessing these skills in a typical tests, the following assignment was used.

Though the instructions are quite straight-forward, it does take some thinking and understanding of functions and transformations. Having just completing an entire unit on transformations, this assignment was a chance for students to apply these skills to a unique situation.

Here is my attempt at an exemplar:

The biggest challenge was making sure that the functions they created were close enough together to create a closed figure as their final product. Most students got around this by creating more of each type of function to create the image they envisioned. I could not complain as a teacher as students were further practicing their skills and providing even more evidence of their understanding of functions and transformations by creating several equations of each type.

The art segment of this project was marked using a rubric.




Following this, students came to class and were asked to determine the equation of the inverse of one of their functions (quadratic, radical or rational). This created a unique assessment for each student as they had each created different functions in their art project.