Assignment #1: As Ahmes was going to St. Ives

 

Our presentation was based on problem 79 of the Rind Papyrus (1650 BCE). We were able to denote the three different word problems that have developed over time in different parts of the world. Ultimately, St. Ives was a nursery rhyme that originated from the Egyptians in problem 79. Interestingly enough, before Arabic numerals were introduced into Europe as seen below in 1202, arithmetic problems were solved used a counting instrument called the Abacus. 

Here is the link to our presentation: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Wqyy652vSVV6qoujA1cfXZ33vjY7iq_9q8HN_-qXx14/edit?usp=sharing


Reflection: 

From this assignment, I was able to fully gage how knowledge is passed down through different generations, not only within the same community but also by demographic spread. It was interesting to see how different cultures were able to interpret arithmetic problems or sequences using a variety of different methods such the Italians through the use of the Abacus instrument. 

Going off what I said above, I wonder what other methods or theories that hold such a prominent value in today's society have derived from the Papyrus. Could some knowledge have been lost in translation? This is definitely a question that has stuck in my mind after completing this assignment and was addressed slightly in the reading on Chinese Mathematics ("Was Pythagoras Chinese") where we learnt that one culture's findings were not fully idolized or recognized by western societies. In other words, if we had not translated the Zhoubi Suanjing in the correct manner then would we even had known that the Pythagoras' theorem was also proven by the Chinese? 

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyNovember 11, 2020 at 12:35 PM

    Good presentation, Margot and Jennah! There is another part of the assignment that I may not have made clear enough: you need to write a reflection on what you learned through the process of doing this assignment. There is still time to catch this up, but it should be completed soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan GerofskyNovember 17, 2020 at 12:22 PM

    Thanks for your thoughtful reflections, Margot -- very interesting!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medieval curricula: Trivium and Quadrivium

 The three quotes that stood out to me the most from this reading was:  1. “Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge "systematically discouraged all technical instruction, holding that a university education should be general and not technical." I think that this quote is referring to how our education system, especially the prestigious institutions are failing to teach knowledge and theories for the sake of teaching and passing on this information. It is rather taught as a way to apply this knowledge to what the students are trying to do as an occupation in the future and making sure they are taught the necessary skills for it. I do understand that this is what institutions are set out to do, however, not everything in life is about learning for a specific outcome but instead learning should be a universal privilege that people can just ponder on and observe what has been taught to them.  2. “Logistic was practical and utilitarian, a study for children and slaves; logic was a libera...
Read more

Numbers with Personality

Prior to reading this paper, I was aware of Synesthesia but not OLP. I think that Major's paper touches upon important aspects that I hadn't thought about before. Specifically, when she spoke about social numbers and how letters such as 'A' are associated with more popular colors such as A. This could be due to the fact that when we are taught the letter system from a young age in western cultures, the letter 'A' is associated with a an apple -  they tend to associate the letters with another object to familiar the children and thus, that is where red comes into the picture. However, when reading that example, I saw it more as we associate letters that are more frequently used with colours that are more frequent as well and that is why the letter 'y' or 'u' would be associated with the colours brown or beige.  I think that students should be given the opportunity to link numbers with another form of sensory or cognitive pathways such as colours o...
Read more

The Importance of the No. 60

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 ...
Read more