A History of Mathematics Blog by Tim

  This article brings up several interesting ideas and expands the history of math significantly from what most of us have grown up with. As we as are culture slowly starting to recognize the importance of representation in the media we consume, but the conversation around representation in our education system seems to be still developing. In math classes, we have the opportunity to vastly expand the scope of our students' mathematical role models and historical figures beyond the 'traditional' Greek and European people.  Many theories are named after the Greek or European thinkers who popularized them in that particular area of the world. I think it's still important to teach students those names for the theories so that they can understand, and communicate well with, mathematicians throughout the world. However, finding other thinkers from other ancient cultures and associating their names with those theories as well broadens students' learning and possibly allow...

Perhaps the most straightforward answer to whether the Eye of Horus is mathematical, mystical or medical is yes... all of the above, but diving into the interesting relationships between the three leads to some fascinating discussions around this ancient civilization.  The symbol gets its name from a mythical figure: the god Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, so it ties in to the mythological culture central to ancient Egypt. It also has been linked to several unit fractions with denominators that are powers of 2; this links it as well to the mathematical ideas originating out of this area of the world at that time. Finally, it is also thought to represent the senses as they were know to the ancient Egyptians (smell, sight, thought, hearing, taste, and touch) and mysteriously matches quite well with modern anatomy's understanding of the structure of the human brain, linking it to the ancient culture's understanding of medicine and anatomy.  The different parts of the symbol are th...

While much of this class has been spent looking at very different ways of writing and solving math problems, researching and working through the problems related to the volume of a pyramid opened my eyes to some of the similarities between ancient and modern ways of conceptualizing mathematical problems. One similarity that fascinated me was the cross-cultural relevance of geometric reasoning. Though it was often difficult in past lessons to wrap my head around the Babylonian sexagesimal system, the geometric reasoning from Lui Hui (the mathematician from ancient China) was reasonably straight forward to understand.  For me, this reinforces the importance of trying to find simple geometric ways to demonstrate solutions for future students instead of relying only on algebraic solutions. As math teachers we will be teaching students the 'language' of math, which certainly includes algebra, however understanding that many of our students not be 'fluent' yet, we need to loo...