The example of rabbits and foxes was introduced in the task (8-F Foxes and Rabbits) to illustrate two functions of time given in a table. We are now in a position to actually model the data given previously with trigonometric functions and investigate the behavior of this predator-prey situation.

The example of rabbits and foxes was introduced in 8-F Foxes and Rabbits to illustrate two functions of time given in a table. The same situation was used in F-TF Foxes and Rabbits 2 to find trigonometric functions modeling the data in the table. The previous situation was somewhat unrealistic since we were able to find functions that fit the data perfectly. In this task, on the other hand, we do some legitimate modelling, in that we come up with functions that approximate the data well, but do not perfectly match, the given data.

This task can be played as a game where students have to guess the rule and the instructor gives more and more input output pairs. Giving only three input output pairs might not be enough to clarify the rule.

This unit builds on the student's prior learning of how to find a rule that takes a given input value to exactly one output value. In this unit students will be able to identify when a relation is a function and use proper vocabulary (domain and range) and function notation.

Families of functions will be introduced in this unit including linear, absolute value, exponential and quadratic families of functions. Students will use graphs, tables and equations to identify the parent function and be able make a graph from the information in an equation and vice versa. This unit also introduces students to the concept of functions and their inverses. Students will write expressions for simple, linear functions that have an inverse.

Students will continue to use the concepts learned in this unit throughout the remainder of the course and in high school courses.

This lab is an investigative lab to help students make a visual connection between quadratic and polynomial functions and their graphs. The lab uses desmos.com and takes about 30-45 minutes.

This task addresses an important issue about inverse functions. In this case the function f is the inverse of the function g but g is not the inverse of f unless the domain of f is restricted.

This task requires students to recognize the graphs of different (positive) powers of x. There are several important aspects to these graphs. First, the graphs of even powers of x all open upward as x grows in the positive or negative direction. The larger the even power, the flatter these graphs look near 0 and the more rapidly they increase once the distance of x from 0 excedes 1.

This exploration can be done in class near the beginning of a unit on graphing parabolas. Students need to be familiar with intercepts, and need to know what the vertex is.

While not a full-blown modeling problem, this task does address some aspects of modeling as described in Standard for Mathematical Practice 4. Also, students often think that time must always be the independent variable, and so may need some help understanding that one chooses the independent and dependent variable based on the way one wants to view a situation.

In this task students must interpret a function in relation to a given problem.

This task can be used as a quick assessment to see if students can make sense of a graph in the context of a real world situation. Students also have to pay attention to the scale on the vertical axis to find the correct match.

In this task students use algebraic methods to determine whether each of the functions is odd, even, or neither.

This task emphasizes the expectation that students know linear functions grow by constant differences over equal intervals and exponential functions grow by constant factors over equal intervals.

The goal of this task is to get students to focus on the shape of the graph of the equation y=ex and how this changes depending on the sign of the exponent and on whether the exponential is in the numerator or denominator. It is also intended to develop familiarity, in the case of f and k, with the functions which are used in logistic growth models, further examined in ``Logistic Growth Model, Explicit Case'' and ``Logistic Growth Model, Abstract Verson.''

In this task, students use trigonometric functions to model the movement of a point around a wheel and, in the case of part (c), through space (F-TF.5). Students also interpret features of graphs in terms of the given real-world context (F-IF.4).

This is a direct task suitable for the early stages of learning about exponential functions. Students interpret the relevant parameters in terms of the real-world context and describe exponential growth.

The purpose of this task is to probe students' ability to correlate symbolic statements about a function using function notation with a graph of the function, and to interpret their answers in terms of the quantities between which the function describes a relationship

The purpose of this task is to help students learn to read information about a function from its graph, by asking them to show the part of the graph that exhibits a certain property of the function. The task could be used to further instruction on understanding functions, or as an assessment tool with the caveat that it requires some amount of creativity to decide how to best illustrate some of the statements.

This problem provides an opportunity to experiment with modeling real data. Populations are often modeled with exponential functions and in this particular case we see that, over the last 200 years, the rate of population growth accelerated rapidly, reaching a peak a little after the middle of the 20th century and now it is slowing down.