Hina EDCP 442

  Col 1                            Col 11      2                                22,30      3                                   15      4                                11,15      5                                   9      6                                 7,30      9                                    5     10...

  Main Idea It is explained in these two articles that the methods we use to measure time have come to us by many different civilizations. Egyptians have thought to construct the 24-hour day, and Sumerians and Babylonians invented the base-60 which shows an hour has 60 minutes and a minute has 60 seconds. How the systems developed The first article elaborates how Egyptians divided daylight and night into 12 parts using sundials and by observing stars. As a result a 24-hour day was produced. But summer hours were longer than winter hours. After that Greek astronomers invented 24 equal-length, 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Equal hours did not become common for ordinary people until mechanical clocks were invented in Europe after many centuries. The Babylonians inherited base 60 number system from the Sumerians and used it positionally, similar to decimal numbers today. The articles suggest several possible explanations for the use of 60: Sixty can be divided evenly b...

  After reading the introduction of The Crest of the Peacock I have had three revelations about mathematics and mathematics history:  1-Mathematics flourished globally, long before Europe’s “modern” period Different cultures like India, the Arab world and Africa show a very deep mathematical thinking culture and uniform mathematical ideas which shaped modern mathematics long before Europe's modern period. This varies from the normal Eurocentric mathematics timeline that is taught in schools. 2-Mathematics developed from everyday life Mathematics has developed from everyday life in different cultures and different societies. For example Indians developed finite series for trigonometric functions, Arabs advanced in computation and algebra and Mesopotamians solved quadratic type problems. 3-Non European Mathematical Systems Non European cultures had formed thorough and precise systems similar to Europe. Like the Indian decimal system with zero, Kerala school’s infinite series for...

  Before reading this paper my thoughts were that mathematics history can easily be added in education in the classroom but it should be mostly a short thing like a story of a mathematician or a fun fact. I had a worry that it might divert the student's attention from the main path even though it will make the math education more interesting, like elaborating the start of negative numbers, observing how people used to solve problems in old times or understanding the discovery of pythagoras theorem. I did not think that  math history could entirely change the methods of teaching math. One thing that surprised me was the differentiation between ‘developed mathematics’ and ‘mathematics in progress’.It is explained in the article that mathematics is the science of trials and errors developed through centuries rather than the logical finished thing explained in books. I felt connected here with my own experience as a teacher and I learned that mistakes are a part of normal learnin...

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