EDCP442 301 2022W1 Juyoung

Nancy and I would like to pick: Zhang Heng. The reason being is the topic particularly interested us as we are both of Asian descent. We wanted to pick a non-European mathematician and by reading some biographies, we thought his was one of the most interesting.  The medium that we will be using is a video animation about his biography and/or powerpoint slides outlining his work. This is something that we are still discusisng. All the references will be updated later but we found some.

I will list 3 point of interests and explain how I could incorporate those into my teaching. 1) Naming Arabic Names     I was quite surprised with the process of coming up with Arabic names. The process involved using their names and after this, comes the phrase "son of so-and-so". This fact can be extended even further and the genealogy can be compounded for generations. For example, Ibraham ibn Sinan ibn Thabit ibn Qurra in the text. I find this particularly interesting because these names have special meanings associated to them like with names associated with Chinese characters.      In mathematics and English, we use a lot of prefixes. On the top of my hand, I remember during my practicum teaching about terminologies to grade 9's like monomial, binomial, and trinomial for the polynomial unit. I had to emphasize that prefixes are important in the English language and it gives some clues as to what the terminology is. I think by explaining what mono, bi, and ...

 1) "...the Romans expected a boy to be ready for advanced work by the time he was sixteen; the Greeks considered him a beginner until he was twenty or older"      I find this quote particularly interesting considering that the Romans and Greeks had a different view of age. Today, in most civilized countries I think 18 would be the standard adult age because we go to high school until that age and our brains are in the developing stages. Furthermore, it is absurd to do "advanced" work at age 16; I consider this having a full time job. I wonder how over the years, countries have decided what universal age would be best appropriate. Also, I would stand more with the Greeks because even when I was 20, I had little to no clue what I wanted to do hence, beginner. 2) "It has been frequently stated and more frequently implied that the trivium-quadrivium division of studies existed in theory but that in actuality only the trivium was studied. This is not entirely true....

    I believe the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is really giving Euclid credit for the work that he has done and that his discoveries is something out of this world. By inspection, the title "Looked on Beauty Bare" is also in the starting lyrics of the poem meaning that her idea of beauty is reinforced in the poem. I believe her definition of beauty is looking at Euclid in awe, in hopes that his work should be appreciated. The reason why I believe this is the case is because in the poem it talks about "to ponder about themselves, the while they stare at something, intricately drawn nowhere". The imagery this gives is that people have no idea about his work and it's hard to understand Euclid's rationality. However, the poem ends with "massive sandal set in stone" which gives the idea to me that his ideas in the present is greatly appreciated and led to some of the modern mathematical concepts of today. I think of this poem turning from ugliness to on...

       I enjoyed watching the Euclidean dance video and the article was an interesting read. One thing that made me stop and think is that the dance choreography must have taken an ample amount of time to do. As the article already stated, the proof of Euclidean is given on paper with all the details for a person to absorb. Does that really help people to understand by giving all the details at once? Through dancing, I've realized that it is a sequence of steps taken to show the end goal and one must understand every intermediate step to make the dance a beauty. This helps solidify the understanding of the proofs. Another thing that made me stop and think was dance being a expressive piece of art. I had the luxury to take a dance course at SFU (EDUC330) and I learned about different movement techniques.  We think math as being abstract and I feel most people don't realize is that the theorems that were derived today is a result of someone's hard work. It is a jo...