Nadine

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...

  Pitanic Video Speaking Notes Hundreds of mathematicians in history have dedicated their lives (or big portions of their lives) to finding pi. Swiss researchers have set a new record in 2021 for 62.8 trillion decimals, which was breaking the previous record in 2020 of 50 trillion. So why study pi so thoroughly when only 39 decimal places would be enough to compute the circumference of a circle surrounding the known universe to within the radius of a hydrogen atom? 1. It’s impressive and gives people bragging rights 2. Humans have a natural inclination to break records 3. Digits can be used as a stress test for supercomputers (Agarwal, 2013) 4. It’s all around us and even in our DNA! Here is a quote from Agarwal (2013): “Pi’s appearance in the disks of the Moon and the Sun, makes it as one of the most ancient numbers known to humanity. It hides in the rainbow, and sits in the pupil of the eye, and when a raindrop falls into water π emerges in the spreading rings. Pi can be found i...

 I think that perhaps Ramanujan had the Ordinal Linguistic Personification quality and more connections in his brain that was discussed in the article by Major.  I personally would choose to mention this in my math class as a way for students to connect to the numbers and better be able to do math in their heads. When we associate numbers with certain feelings, visuals, words, etc I feel that it makes it easier to trace them and remember them as we work. I think it would make it easier to trace back to where we may have made mistakes, and give students an appreciation for the feeling of each type of question.  I always remember numbers very easily and I do think that this is why. I thought while reading this article that maybe I have the same Ordinal Linguistic Personification quality as Ramanujan. Numbers do have a certain feeling to me, and I dont actively memorize them very often. But I still accidentally remember them all the time without knowing it. If someone asks m...