Margot's EDCP 442 Blog

 

Upon reading this extract, I was especially inspired by the flow of events and knowledge that circulated our world of mathematics today. The three things that stood out to me most were:  1. In our education system today, we tend to ignore historical facts from all cultures and countries in certain academic disciplines, especially mathematics. Most of the figures found in the text illustrate how we have evidence that suggests mathematics has been a contributable subject from many regions and dates back to 800 - 500 BC with the Sulbasultras. Steering us away from the Eurocentric viewpoint we typically engage within our curriculums.  2. Majority of the ending of the chapter focused on the Mayan civilization. I found it interesting that they were more than 12,000miles away from Babylon, but produced a similar numerical system consisting of similar symbols. However, instead of using a base 60 system as discussed in our previous classes, they were the founders of the number zero and...

As we managed to see in class, the Babylonian mathematics time table was on a sexagesimal system. Naturally, when comparing both the numbers 60 and 10, I was able to distinguish their mathematical differences between them. Sixty is divisible by all numbers 1-6 (on the other hand: 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60) whereas 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5 and 10 (itself) maybe making it easier to mathematically divide or use fractions. Alongside this, I remember in my chemistry classes we always used to focus on Fullerene's which are Carbon allotropes. Interestingly enough, Buckminsterfullerene has a formula of C60 and its natural composition of carbon atoms are arranged in hexagons and pentagons, both shapes being a division of 60.  In today's world, the number 60 has also been prominent in keeping our clocks on the correct path. Each hour and minute consists of this number and both military (non-integer) and regular time (whole number) clocks are divisible with little error. We again see ...