This assignment was completed for my Foundations of Math 10 class. We were assigned to make our names using functions in Desmos. Below are the photos of the completed assignment as well as the reflection question.

Photos:

Reflection:

Q:

Write to explain your creative and critical thinking process as you worked to create your name using equations. Which equations did you use for each letter? How did you move them around and change their slant, height, length, and position? Did you have any challenges? Any aha moments? Did you get help? What did this assignment help you understand about equations of linear relations? Be specific and use mathematical language.

A:

     To complete my name in Desmos, my one and only source was my name tag from last year. This helped me to remind myself about how equations worked, and how to implement specific and complicated equations, like the circles for the letter D. Although I referenced these equations, none of them were at all the same as what I used last year. All the letters were at a different scale and made to be of much better quality so they didn’t have gaps at intersections. The D was made using two vertical lines and two circles with restrictions to limit where the D’s tails went. The Y only used obliques with restrictions. The L was made entirely of verticle and horizontal lines and was the easiest letter to make.

One major issue I had when making the letters (especially A) was shading. Although this was not necessary, I definitely preferred the look of a shaded letter, so I made sure that all were fully shaded. The easiest way to do so was to use the “a<x<b” and “a<y<b” (domain+range) functions to make the regions I needed coloured. When working with slopes and circles, it was a lot easier to use assigned function labels like “`a_{1},\ a_{2},\ a_{3}`” rather than re-writing the whole function for each line. The issue was that to make my functions with labels, the functions could not be written in slope-intercept form. I discovered that they had to be written in a point-slope form with the x-intercept. Although this was more complicated in the short term, it made shading much easier because I could shade by saying “`a_{1}<x<a_{2}`” for example. Finally, for the letter N I used obliques, vertical and horizontal lines. I believe I am a lot more familiar with functions now and I understand how different values affect the functions and how they look on a graph.