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Sept 23 Reading

 I hated mathematical symbols. I've always thought that math should be written out in words, so the Babylonian rhetorical algebra actually makes more sense to me, disregarding the odd language of course. When I got into higher level maths that started using function notation like f(x) in grade 10, I could not wrap my head around it. It made no sense to me, and later math courses did not get any better. Once I approached calculus it was like nothing was written in words anymore, nothing made sense anymore. And discrete mathematics and mathematical proofs often used more symbols to represent things that can easily be stated in just plain old English. So, similar to how proofs can be written out without symbols, every math problem should be able to be listed out step by step without any symbols as symbols just represent words, it's just shortening a word to a universally recognizable symbol. Mathematics is all about taking small things and applying it to everything, expanding it t...
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Sept 21 reading

Reading time during the day was never something I've given more than a second to think about. I would just pull out my phone and read the time straight off the phone screen. I didn't consider where it had come from as time feels inevitable and I assumed that this way of counting time by 60 seconds 60 minutes and 24 hours was inevitable as well. Reading the two articles presented offered me a new perspective on time and showed me how complicated it must have been to come up with this system that I take for granted everyday. I did not know that we had leap seconds that occasionally occurred on top of the leap years that we already have. The two articles touch upon different fields for the origins of this counting convention, as one seems to focus on theories more rooted in logic while the other focuses on theories rooted in function. Seeing how the people in the past came up with these number systems purely based on counting on their fingers or their finger joints and built all o...
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5 pairs that multiply to 45

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    3  |  15          4  |  11 , 15 5  |  9       6  |  7, 30     10  |  4, 30 3 x 15 = 45 (4 x 11) + (4 x 15/60) = 45 5 x 9 = 45 (6 x 7) + (6 x 30/60) = 45 (10 x 4) + (10 x 30/60) = 45
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Sept 16 Reading

It was very surprising to see so many different regions of the world contributing to the development of mathematics. As throughout the courses I've been in, there are a few names that stand out but they all have an European origin. Even with the "Dark Ages" that stunted mathematical development, all the other regions continued to research and explore mathematics and I'm assuming that they communicated that somehow to the European scholars. The article touches upon individual mathematical development within regions as well, but I wonder how that works. Do regions happen to explore different paths of mathematics or do they sometimes have overlap and do the same thing but use different symbols or approach it differently that need to be standardized. Kind of like some cultures using base 60. Or if Egypt and Mesopotamia never communicated their discoveries but just happened to have similar results.  The "Chinese Remainder Theorem" is mentioned in the article. I s...
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September 14th Reading

 Math history should be incorporated into teaching as it builds conceptual knowledge in a way that can't be replicated by shortcuts. If a student somehow memorizes every single addition problem, they still won't be able to apply this knowledge to understand the concept of multiplication. Understanding how people in the past came to understand mathematical concepts recreates the feeling of discovery and really embeds the knowledge into your head compared to just taking shortcuts. Math history can be applied in classrooms by recreating the steps and thought process used in the past to discover the math facts in the first place.  The article mentions using worksheets to facilitate this type of learning and integrating math history into the lesson, but I always believed worksheets are not very effective for retaining information, as I always found worksheets to be boring and ineffective. I think that, to facilitate a feeling of discovery, an activity would definitely offer a bette...
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Hello World

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 Hello everyone, test 2
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