We looked at Babylonian, Ancient Egyptian, Russian, Greek, Maya, Islamic and Indian Mathematics. One key takeaway for me in this course was recognizing the importance of integrating Math history into my classes because it shows students how Math is part of human history and people all around the word have made math discoveries - sometimes coming to similar discoveries without ever communicating. I think learning concepts in the context of how they were developed could be a great activity for students because it helps them see the inquiry process of math. Another key takeaway was that Math has been taught from a very euro-centric perspective and this means our disciplinary language can be racist in the sense that it highlights only the discoveries from white people. I didn't know about many of the mathematicians we learned about and how many concepts were developed before Greek mathematicians arrived at the ideas, yet we know them by the Greek names. I want to highlight a variety of mathematicians in my classroom. I had a lot of fun with my final project. I think I would have enjoyed spending more time looking at specific high school content and how we could incorporate math history into various lessons.
Monday, December 11, 2023
Final Project slides and reflection
I really enjoyed making this project. My family is very musical and I actually got this idea from my dad, who recently wrote an article on tempered tuning and we talked about the harmonic series and how saying something is "harmonious" is connected to how harmonics sound good to us because they are in nature! I enjoyed researching the history and thought it was really cool how the name came from the musical connection. I think the Harmonic Series is such a great example of the beauty of Math and how it is all around us. I chose to make the art project the way I did because I thought watercolour would show the layering of the harmonics well. I was really happy with how it turned out and I really enjoyed painting again and trying to make colours that were just slightly different from the last. There is so much more Math that could be explored that is related to music.