Blog Post 9: Was Pythagoras Chinese?

 I think acknowledging non-European contributions to math is impactful for all students for several reasons. For students of non-European descent, it shows that their ancestors were equally intelligent and capable. By ignoring non-European contributions, some students may develop a false perception of history. For all students, knowledge of a diverse array of contributors helps develop a more inclusive, worldly, and accurate perspective of history. 

I also believe that the naming of mathematical concepts and theorems is important as it is a way of acknowledging a contribution and it is what will likely be most remembered. At the same time, I can imagine it would be difficult to decide who to name ideas after if several people claim the same idea which could cause confusion. 

Blog Post 8: Surveying

2 Questions

1. How did the Ancient Egyptians create such incredible architecture when their unit(s) of measurement lacked standardization?
2. When and why did Egypt adopt new methods of measurement? How have their units of measurement changed throughout time?

1 Surprise

1. I was surprised to see land surveyors depicted on a tomb, as it gives a lot of importance to them and they are something I have never heard of.  

Blog Post 7: Russian Peasant and Ancient Egyptian Multiplication Methods

Commonalities between Russian peasant and Ancient Egyptian multiplication

• Both use repeated doubling 
• Both have two columns 
• Both work step-by-step/row-by-row to simplify large calculations 
• Both exclude odd numbers from the left-hand column
• Both methods have a greater number in the right-hand column than in the left-hand column

I found the Russian peasant system a bit less intuitive whereas with the Ancient Egyptian system, by looking at the example I was able to find patterns and figure out how it worked relatively quickly. 

Blog Post 6: Ancient Egyptian Multiplication

Multiplying 30 by 6

1                                                                                                                                    6

2                                                                                                                                    12

4                                                                                                                                    24

8                                                                                                                                    48

16                                                                                                                                  96

Blog Post 5: Babylonian Word Problems

I found it interesting reading about word problems as I struggled with them (applied math) far more than pure math growing up. Although I dreaded them in school, I think word problems help students develop the skills they need to transfer their math knowledge to real-world situations (i.e., making the skills students learn useful in their daily lives). 

During the reading, I liked the section by Ainley on practicality as it answered questions I myself had as a student. I previously maintained the argument that applied math was too contrived to feel useful, though the interviewer's response was something I had never considered; that if they were not, they may be far too difficult (or easy) to be of use. 

I found the discourse on pages 6 and 7 thought-provoking. In my opinion, although abstract problems may appear unuseful, they can be healthy for the brain and can enhance our cognitive abilities. As a psychology student, I rarely (or never) use high-level math, so the way that I see math coming into play in my life is mainly for developing creative problem-solving skills. While I may never need their lessons, I have held onto some math 9-12 workbooks from my schooling to use as brain puzzels. 

Blog Post 4: Babylonian Multiplication Table

 Col 1        Col 2

2                22, 30

6                7, 30

10              4, 30

18              2, 30

25              1, 48

Blog Post 3: Why based 60?

 When thinking about why Babalonian’s would use base 60 instead of base 10, I wondered if it might have to do with time (60 seconds, 60 minutes…). I also thought it would be convenient since it’s an even number which makes it easy to divide. Similarly to what we discussed in class, it could have to do with geometry (360 degrees in a circle). 

Through google, I found my predictions pretty reasonable. I read that babylonians came up with the concept of time being 24 hours, 60 minutes and 60 seconds, so base 60 would make perfect sense. I also read that some ancient groups used base 5 while others used base 12 so 60 became a common factor. Like what I speculated, some attributed base 60 to the fact that it is convenient for fractions.