Lisa's Blog

I think our interpretations rely on our familiarity with contemporary algebra. When I studied math in Highschool, we used to be introduced basic formulas, expressions, and methods to solve the problem. Once we become familiar with these, we then moved to solve some word problems. Most of the word problems were based on our current real-life situations. For example, there were word problems dealing with car’s speed or measuring the time when the ball hits the ground. It was a good chance to apply what we have learned and try our knowledge into different situations. So, it was not only learning just about the simple algebra but also interpretations with real life situation and students can find some familiarity.    On the other hand, there were some students who doesn’t understand the purpose and reason of these kind of word problems as they thought there is no chance that we calculate this in our daily life.     I can relate this idea to Babylonian math history. Gerof...

 There were three things that I was surprised when reading this book. First thing was that place-value number system had invented by Babylonian and they knew how to solve quadratic equations and knew the Pythagorean theorem which is the relationship between the sides of a right angled triangle. I knew about the fact that Babylonian knew the Pythagorean theorem as I have done some online research for last class, however I did not know the fact that they also knew the method of solving quadratic equations. Quadratic equation is used a lot in our real life, it can be used to calculate the area of an enclosed space, profit and loss of the product or speed of an object. It was glad to know that Babylonian knew about solving the quadratic equation.  Another thing that I was surprised was knowing about the root of Algebra which helps representation of the problem in the mathematical expressions. I have learned and studied algebra for few many years from Highschool, but I have not tho...

  Speculative: 60 is a useful number and used a lot in our daily lives. It is used in times (seconds, minutes, hours) and it is also used in degrees. Degree of the circle is 360 and degree of a triangle is 180 which is 60 times 3. I think 60 is significant as it can be easily divided with the numbers, and it has more divisors than any smaller positive integer. Research: After I do research about 60, I could check that numbers of seconds in minute, minutes in hour come from the base 60 numeral system. I could also know few more significances which are that Babylonians knew the formula that is today known as Pythagorean Theorem, and they thought there are 360 days in a year. They divided the circumference into 360 and believed one of 360 equals a day. However, one main fault of 60 in Babylonian numeration system was absence of zero Reference Lamb, Evelyn. “Ancient Babylonian Number System Had No Zero.” Scientific American Blog Network , Scientific American, 31 Aug. 2014, https://blog...

  I believe math history could be incorporated into my own math teaching as students will have a better sense of understanding at math and it will be more approachable for them. When I think about my past math classes, I used to get some mathematic facts, formulas and learned how to apply those in a question. Although there were some real-life related word problems that we could apply what we've learned in class, it wasn't that a lot. I think many students think that math is so different than the other subjects such as social studies or sciences as numbers appear most of the times and they think there is no connection between social issues. However, when students have a chance to know about history of math, they might find some interests at math and math can become more approachable for them as they know some math background instead of starting with math contents right away.  There were few things that I agreed at while reading this article. One of them was we can use math his...