Blog Post #7: Ancient Egyptian Division

 I tried 99/8. See below:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #21: Course Reflection (what I learned, new ideas, insights from experiences, suggestions for the course)

I never stop talking about how much I love this course! I have even redone some of my presentations from class for family and family friends! I truly cannot offer many suggestions on how to make this course better as I truly admired every moment of it.  I have learned so much from how math was involved in the construction of ancient Egyptian pyramids, to the history of Pi. I've learned the magic and many different applications of permutations throughout history, and how to use art when teaching Math History. I came into this class not even knowing the true value of math history curriculum, and have come out understanding how incredibly powerful such a class can be. I love that there are people integrated into math and that this course plays a role in decolonizing our history, math, and science books (taking attention away from the often ill-credited white men and giving attention to others who truly deserve it).  I was fascinated to learn how to demonstrate mathematical proofs...
Read more

Blog Post #5: History of Babylonian Word Problems

Throughout my reading of the text, I found myself trying to answer the question found on the first page. Why have word problems persisted through time and culture despite not being purposefully preserved? I loved this question in class and wanted to pick up answer from this reading. With the use of word problems concerning unrealistic 8-story high piles of grain, it's easy to think that these were simply to get a good laugh out of people or they were just for fun or for a challenge (pure) which would be easy and enjoyable to preserve. However, I found myself thinking: does a word problem have to be practical for it to have teachable concepts? Perhaps the teachability is why these were preserved throughout time. These word problems could simply be for  beginners with no application to the real world or perhaps just be using easier numbers than in real life that prepare students for the soon to come real world problems. I assume the latter to be the case. After all, we find thes...
Read more

Blog Post #6: Babylonian Algebra from Crest of the Peacock

 I have a lot of trouble understanding the ways in which they solved problems when they didn't use algebra. I imagine one way in which they could solve geometrical problems is with symmetry and basic counting, but otherwise struggle really hard to understand their math at all. The way that we were taught math clearly impacts our ability to see problems in different ways. When reading the text about Babylonian algebra, it seems like my brain skips over the method that they used, and solves it in a simpler and faster way before I can even finish reading their method! Isn't that funny! And to be able to actually state or communicate a mathematical principle at that time without algebra ? Forget about it! I wish I could answer this question better, but I can't quite wrap my mind around it. Given my complete loss for words and ideas, I am so impressed that they were able to accomplish solving pre-algebraic quadratics through estimates and approximations. This does bring me back ...
Read more