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Math Activities

  I really enjoyed the ethnomathematics activities that we did yesterday. All the activities highlighted how maths is present and rooted in the many various cultures presented around the world. There were games and activities from as early as the middle ages and all the way back to before the Romans in the 8th century BCE. In my opinion, I think this is an attest to how maths can be considered a present aspect of all of human history. It is something we tend to not think about but doing the maths activities made me think about that even more. In many cases,such as the game Mancala. Looking at it at first glance I would not expect it to be considered a game that is rooted with mathematics. It was interesting to learn that the game was created in 1400 BCE and was intended to symbolise the different stages of agriculture. I think what they stated in their presentation was true to what we can consider in relation to maths being that it can teach students the importance of maths and how emb
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Colonial Math

  In week 5 we talked a lot about the future of ethnomathematics in the context of past and future colonial history. In the context of colonialism I believe it has a tendency to re-write our understanding of things to cater to it and the individuals who benefit from it. Unfortunately from what we have learned maths and ethnomathematics is not immune to colonialism. In many cases, maths nowadays for us takes the viewpoints of that of a eurocentric. To me this has made maths very black and white and not colourful. I think if it was more colourful and not so colonised, allowing different cultural maths to be present would allow us to understand it more. In my case, I have struggled with maths and believed there was only one way to do it. However, learning the history of ethnomathematics has taught me that maths comes from every corner of the world. But it does seem as thought Europe, the West, and colonialism have tried to claim maths for themselves.  Whereas maths is both European, India
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I love Calenders

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       This blog will talk about both the modern and Mayan calendar and how our sense of time and place revolves around the idea of maths and relates to the topic of ethnomathematics. Professor Mgombelo sent us all a Mayan Calendar and it has been something we have referred to throughout the last couple of months in EDUC-4P75. The Mayan Calender to me is very compelling because I find it very interesting to see how ancient cultures studied, learned, and made sense of the world around them. This also relates to one of my past blogs that discussed the numerical system we use coming all the way from India. Something very fundamental to the maths we use that is not even taught to kids in school. Firstly, in regards to the Mayans pyramid, being built in 1050 the pyramid already tells us something about their knowledge of maths and their perception of the year.  The Mayans constructed the pyramids with 4 sides of stairs, they would construct 91 steps in total. If you multiply 91(Steps) x 4(S
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Math Games

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  Something we have been talking about a lot is the idea of math in everyday life and I thought it was interesting when we were looking at mathematics in games and leisure. What sparked my thinking was when I was watching the documentary with the ancient game in the Middle East. It was cool to see that this math game was so prominent it was woven into their way of life and culture. Going back dozens of generations into ancient culture. Going so far to have houses dedicated to this game. Math is a tool for cultural gatherings? I think where we this is in a western society would be using math to learn or to gamble. In many casinos people can count the cards and predict what card the dealer will flip next. The game I am going to explain thankfully does not involve taking my money. It is a whole 2 dollars at the dollar store. Way better then losing 25-dollar hands in Niagara. In a more leisure sense, math can be seen with card games such as “Euchre”. A popular card game that has the player
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Math and History!

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 I found it very interesting how the ancient people of India came to develop the numerical system we all know and love today. Over the week where we watched and studied how ancient people all discovered their kind of mathematics generally around the same time. My first teachable is history so I always wonder why something is the way it is and now I happily know where many ideas of mathematics come from! I generally found the whole history of mathematics interesting. The documentary allowed me to develop a different historical view on the times as opposed to what  I am used to studying. It is almost like I put "Math Lens" on to see how intertwined human history and maths are. We even unfortunately see this with the Chinese leader who used maths to determine when the best time to get an heir is. The funny thing is this makes perfect sense when you think about how important one's legacy was in the context of an ancient monarch/leader. It was cool to compare and contrast the
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Jack Evans' Blog

 Welcome everyone! This will be my intro blog for EDUC 4P75. Hope we enjoy this endeavour of me writing my reflections during the next couple of lovely months. This blog will be packed with things I think are neat during this time in EDUC 4P75. During the course of the term, I hope to gain a deeper understanding as to how other cultures, people, etc, operate in relation to mathematics. Already maths seems fluid to me as we learned from 4/3 in the ted talk yesterday in class. So I suspect there will be more instances where we see maths in unexpected places.  I hope the learning environment fosters this way of thinking. I already think it does as I saw last night during class. However, I look forward to the rest of the term and the chance to study mathematics in different instances surrounding education. Feel free to also check back throughout the course for more of my thoughts surrounding what we discussed in class, readings, etc.  Jack Evans!
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