Group work Reflection

 

I could learn a lot of things through this group work. Firstly, it was nice time to review some definitions of terminologies especially sagitta. Moreover, it was nice to know formulas for finding sagitta and chord that are needed when we want to find them in each circle. Our group had to derive those two formulas by modern way and an ancient way. By deriving in a modern way, I could understand well how formulas can be found by using Pythagorean theorem. By deriving in an ancient way, it was nice to know that it is possible to derive it by using an ancient way and we can still get the identical formula. 

 

I could also learn about ancient Babylonian history of the segment of the circle. I was nice to know that they started to study the properties of a circle such as area of circle. Also, I learned that Babylonian believed that relation between diameter and circumference of circle was c=3d where c is circumference and d is a diameter. Moreover, they approximated the pi and 3, not 3.14. 

 

Our group also looked at ancient Babylonian word problem which was ’60 is the circumference, 2 is perpendicular. Find the chord’. We could see two approaches to this problem which are modern method and Babylonian method. It was interesting to see that Babylonian equation was identical to modern equation. The only difference was that Babylonian used 3 instead of pi. The difference was within 5% of the real value of the pi. 

 

Through this group work, I could know about Babylonian’s historical background of this problem. I was impressed that there were not that much of difference between modern and Babylonian formula. It was nice opportunity to view in two different ways, modern and ancient to the problem. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics of Medieval Islam

  One of the interesting things I’ve found from this reading was about a person called Thābit.    Thābit was the person who lived from 836 to 901 and had a gift for languages. Translators were employed by wealthy families as well as by caliphs in that time. Thābit was a member of the sect of star worshippers whose religious beliefs were abhorrent to Muslims. His linguistic talents were discovered by Banū Mūsā. He also had mathematic talents that could make great results in science. Finally, he could earn a place of honor in the caliph’s retinue. By reading this book, I was really impressed onThābit’s various talents.     Another point that interested me was Al-Khwārizmī’s principal contributions. He contributed to the four areas of arithmetic, algebra, geography and astronomy. One of the books he contributed was ‘The Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation’ which introduced decimal positional system and made system convenient. Mo...
Read more

Marshall Islander’s Charts for navigating

  By reading this article, I could learn how mathematical ideas were integrated in the view of maps and mapping. One of the interesting parts was that there are two types of Marshall Island stick charts. Meddo and rebbelith are the first type which show significant features of the environment. The second type is called mattang which is more abstract that models the dynamic geometry. Mattang was used in the training of navigators. It contained idealized shapes and forms that could explicate the principles of swell and land interaction.   I think embodied mathematics is significant in the history of mathematics as people could learn from their environment and their geometric aspects of the phenomena. In this article, the natural phenomena were oceanographic. The system was a conceptualization of the interplay of land, sea, and wind which led relative positions and directions to be important and the system could give arise to geometric implications.     One of the possi...
Read more