In my mind, an hour is always a circle (same as a regular clock) and time is measured in 15 minutes or a quarter of a circle. After reading the Lombardi's article, I was surprised that an hour was not a empirically constant unit of time measurement. It made logical sense that people treated day and night as separate entities where each had 12 hours. It's suggested that Hipparchus introduced 24-hour day around 147 B.C., so people over a millennium had to work out the seasonally varying length of an hour. Another surprising snippet was the usage of clepsydra mentioned in Lombardi's article. This is a fascinating way where fluid dynamics is used as a substitute as sun light or lack of during night. Lombardi stated in his article that the base 60 was first invented by Sumerian, which then passed down to Babylonian, which then passed down to Greek. However, the reason of 60 was unknown. In O'Connor and Roberston's article, they had a different hypothesis about the reason...
This has been a wonderful journey to learn about a rich side of Math which I thought really little about. While Susan has structured the course in the chronological order of past civilizations, it was eye-opening to see how capable ancient people were in using mathematics to aid their lives. Learning the intricacies of the base 60 system in Babylonian math and its relationship to time was fun. I still remember that the 24-hour system was introduced as early as around 147 BC Hipparchus. As someone who grew up only knowing base 10 and base 2 systems, I never thought about how base 10 is just a construct instead of an empirical truth. Another aspect of the class I enjoyed was also the recognition that math history and contributions have been largely euro-centric. The progression of the course focusing on other non-European history was helpful and insightful for someone who came from a Chinese background. Math problems have also been a challenge as an ELL student in the past. Seeing ho...
I think it does make a significant difference given the demographics which a BC classroom looks like. Not recognizing non-European contribution can be a form of culture oppression. While many students are not aware of this, learning about history of non-European Mathematics broadens the viewpoint similar to a social issue. For students who can feel like their culture is recognized, it could helps them understand the concepts better, or even more engaged in learning. For the naming of Pythagoras Theorem, I find it very euro-centric where it is named after the person who has discovered it. In the Chinese equivalent, the theorem is called 勾(gou)股(gu)定理(theorem) where 勾 and 股 represents opposite and adjacent in a right angle triangle. Hence, the naming is literally just Opposite-Adjacent Theorem. This showed the naming scheme was on the basis that it was a discovery, not an invention. It's the lack of person-centric meaning which speaks volume about the culture of traditional Chinese d...
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