Blog Post #15: What I learned from Assignment 2 presentations (Part 1)

 4 things I learned today during the presentations: 

1. From my own presentation, and from all the presentations in general, I learned the value of working together. So often, people all over the world came up with similar mathematical rules hundreds or sometimes even thousands of years apart! Imagine if they had had the same resources and abilities that we do to work together internationally. Some may have saved so much time and we may have been more advanced today! 

2. Another thing that was reinforced for me today was that people do not always get proper credit. For example, during the Pascal's triangle presentation, we learned that Tartaglia gave six rows of Pascal's triangle before Pascal did, and we don't really for sure know where Pascal got his rows from. Perhaps he copied them, came up with them himself, or had help. Either way, he got credit when more people had discovered it before him. This also speaks to what Michelle was saying about how people had very similar problems, and happened to come up with similar solutions which is very cool!

3. Different notations make a huge difference! This isn't something I had thought of before Bonyo's presentation about Exponents! There is clearly room for misinterpretation when there are different notations depending on where you go geographically and what time period you visit. However, this got me thinking that beauty is found in understanding different perspectives and reasons for certain notations, more so than in assimilation to one form of notation that doesn't agree with certain cultures and beliefs. 

4. Jenny's presentation was magical! Literally! It was about the mysticism in probability. My presentation only just touched on the intersection of Cabala and permutations which had a certain mysticism to it, but I think it's so fascinating that probability was often used in predicting one's fate or future, or that probability and dice games have had a large place in Indigenous culture. I think it's incredible that something so spiritual can have a place in mathematics!

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