Activity Description Students investigate very simple functions by trying to guess the algebraic form from inputs and outputs. Function Machine is one of the Interactivate assessment explorers.

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Function Machine

Place in mathematics curriculum:

• practice students' pattern finding skills
• introduce basic notions from algebra
• motivate the idea of a function of one variable
• practice students' arithmetic skills

This activity allows the user to explore simple linear functions; the function is determined by looking for patterns in the outputs. The functions available for exploration in the function machine activity have one of the following forms:



where the underline can be any integer between -10 and 10. This activity would work well in same ability groups of two to four for about forty to forty-five minutes if you use the exploration questions and twenty to twenty-five minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• give implicit directions on what they are to do. For example, "Today we are going to learn how functions work. We will figure out several important facts about functions..."
• discuss the vocabulary, input, output, function rule...