Course Reflection

 Reflection on course:

After re-reading my blog posts and perhaps reconsidering some of my opinions, I’ve come to appreciate just how much math history has influenced mathematics today. In fact, as I was preparing a unit plan, I found videos that connect to today’s math curriculum and the entire video database includes math history.

My first takeaway is how mathematics can be traced back to it’s origins and different civilizations to explain it’s use in society. For example, analyzing the weight scale problem helped me realize that mathematics can be used to solve problems when technologies like the weight scales today are not yet created. I’m certain that the idea of powers of 3 and powers of 2 have many applications beyond weight scale measurement.

Secondly, looking at the different base systems, whether it is the base 60 system from the babylonians (sexagesimal), the base 20 system (vigesmal) from the mayans, helped me realize the benefit of looking at mathematics or problem solving from a different lense and the advantages and disadvantages that each approach has. For example, it is really easy to quantify time with the babylonian system and perhaps would have agricultural benefits as you can easily divide into halves, thirds, 4ths (due to so many factors). That being said, there are also a whopping 60 symbols.

Lastly, I really enjoyed learning about the concept of beauty and mathematics. Even through my own research, whether it was the golden ratio, or the significance of divinity and numbers and how many religious institutions have domes that are created with a certain mathematical framework, or the ratio of human body parts, it is truly magnificent how all things can be traced back to mathematics. Even mathematics can be traced back to movement as show with the euclidean dancing proofs.

So that would be my rose, I think if I had to include a wish, it would be for more hands on materials to be brought into the class. I really enjoyed looking at the papyrus and some of the other materials and would like to see more for future classes.

Thank you,

Zain.

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyJanuary 5, 2025 at 8:25 PM

    Thank you Zain! I appreciate your reflections on the course, and I'm glad that the papyrus and some of the other materials were helpful. I will definitely try to bring these more into play for next year's course. It's been great having you in the class!

    ReplyDelete

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