Pedro Lopez

9th Grade Extrapolation and Curve-Fitting Project

December 08, 2011
In algebra II we needed to do predict HIV cases in a specific country. The country was randomly selected
and giving to each pair of students. This was not an individual project; I had to work with another student
to complete this task. My partner and I got the country named Burma that today is known also as
Myanmar. We were giving data from the previous years of HIV cases in Burma or Myanmar so that we
can predict future cases using math. The data was given to us in a word document. We needed to predict
5 years to the future and 20 years. My partner and I worked on the same document and we were
answering the questions asked in that document. O the cover page we put pictures of Burma and our
names under them. According to our estimates, in 5 years Burma of Myanmars HIV cases will decrease
to -5846335 and in 20 years it will decrease to -69035.14. In the end of the project out teacher told us if
our predictions were close to the corrected answer and we were. Our prediction was the most close from
the rest of our class mates.
The GLPO that I met in doing this project is communicate ideas because we predicted the future with an
equation. I think that this project shows that I am in the emerging level because I used Microsoft Excel as
a source for my project. This was the first encounter that I had with a new Microsoft software. Excel is
software where data is entered and with the correct formula data is transferred back. This is a very helpful
tool to use in the future because the computer pretty much does the entire math for you. Before this
project I had little knowledge from this country and did not believe that math can be used to predict the
future, but now I realize that math can only estimate close to the future using formulas.
I learned a lot about the country Burma or Myanmar. I learned that this is a third world country meaning
that they are not one of the super powers known today. In fact, I did not even know where the country
Burma or Myanmar was located until I google-ed it online. I also learned how to find an equation using
excel to be able to predict the future. By predicting the future of HIV cases, the country can help prevent
the exponential growth. I also learned how to make the computer do the entire math in Excel by just
adding the information in to the formula that my partner and I made.
If I were to redo this project I will use my time wisely in order to complete the whole project. I say this
because I did not started to work on the actual project until the week it was due and the teacher had given
us 3 weeks to work on it. Although I got a B on this project, I believe that if I had worked harder to finish
earlier I would have had time to go back and revise and errors to get a higher score. I will look for more
information to make my prediction accurate.