This morning through the Open Culture blog I learned about an excellent series of archived NPR Math Guy episodes. Keith Devlin is NPR’s Math Guy who appears on NPR’s Weekend Edition and Morning Edition programs. Over the years he has contributed 78 segments that explain the mathematics of items in the news. For example you can listen to this segment about the math behind election polling or this episode about the mathematics behind airline ticket prices.

Applications for Education
The Math Guy archives could be a great place to find some “real world” mathematics examples and problems for your students to tackle. The episodes provide a good cross-over between mathematics and current events, perfect for teachers trying to show the relevance of mathematics to their students.