My own Babylonian-style base 60 multiplication table for No. 45

 

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskySeptember 30, 2020 at 11:24 AM

    Excellent, Margot! Nice examples.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan GerofskySeptember 30, 2020 at 11:25 AM

    There was also a homework reading on Babylonian algebra that you were to respond to on your blog. Be sure to catch this up as soon as possible!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Susan GerofskyOctober 21, 2020 at 11:54 AM

    Margot, you are seriously behind in your reading and blogging! I will send you an email about this today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Presenting - Assignment 3 Reflection

I thought that the creative aspect of all the presentations, helped me understand each groups topic better and thus, would be a great way to incorporate creativity in the classroom. From Jennah and I's presentation of the History of Bhramagupta, I was able to tie together his various academic achievements into one painting.  What I found most provoking and a big take-way was when we talked about how this theories and ideologies were spread across the world, first through Arabic kingdoms and then secondly, through the translation to Latin where they spread across Medieval Europe. I think this again, shows how much our modern educational system lacks in teaching the origins and the stories behind mathematical proofs or formulas.  Apart from this, I was not aware that Bhramagupta was the famous mathematician to begin the conversation of the concept of zero. I remember when I was being taught basic multiplication in junior school no teacher could explain to me why every number mul...
Read more

Final Course Reflection

Overall, this course was a great refresher to all the business courses I am usually enrolled in. It was eye-opening to be able to relay all this profound information to my peers and family members and teaching them about where all the important mathematical concepts came from (they might have enjoyed this course as much as I did from the sidelines haha).  I honestly had no idea that ancient civilisations such as the Egyptians and Babylonians were the main leaders in groundbreaking theories and proofs. The fact that the Babylonians used a base of 60 was the main shock to me as I had no idea how to interpret their system into the base 10 that we use today. Another one of my favourite readings was the "Is Pythagoras Chinese" reading as it showed how in both Asian and Western cultures, they were coming up with the same ideologies and proofs but by using different methodologies of both teaching and solving. That reading also opened up my understanding of the different language bar...
Read more

'Was Pythagoras Chinese?' - Reading and Response

Upon reading this paper, it is clear that both the Greeks and Chinese had their own mathematical discovery triumphs despite the lack of communication between both civilizations. As noted by Ross Gustafson, the Greeks were more focused on the understanding of the different proofs and how they were able to solve the different problems such as the right-angle triangle or the verification of the square root of 2 to be an irrational number.  Even though my career doesn't involve traditional teaching, from a students perspective who has has to learn about mathematics, I will say that learning the methodology has more emphasis in school cirriculums than understanding where the actual math came from. Therefore I would make the slight comparison that the way in which we teach students mathematics today follows a similar sturcture to those of the Chinese. The texts states that the  Jiu Zhang suahshu "was not to prove beyond argument the material but to guide the reader (student) on the ...
Read more