1 / 29

Why Should Historical Truth Matter to Teachers of Mathematics? Dispelling Myths while Promoting Maths Judith V. Grabiner

Why Should Historical Truth Matter to Teachers of Mathematics? Dispelling Myths while Promoting Maths Judith V. Grabiner Pitzer College, Claremont, California jgrabiner@pitzer.edu.

Jimmy
Download Presentation

Why Should Historical Truth Matter to Teachers of Mathematics? Dispelling Myths while Promoting Maths Judith V. Grabiner

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Why Should Historical Truth Matter to Teachers of Mathematics? Dispelling Myths while Promoting Maths Judith V. Grabiner Pitzer College, Claremont, California jgrabiner@pitzer.edu

  2. 1. First Myth: The social history of mathematics is easy; just determine what nation or group your mathematician comes from and generalize

  3. 2. All modern mathematics comes from Christian men in the Graeco-European tradition.

  4. Notable mathematicians of the past who are included on the 2009 MAA Poster, “Women of Mathematics” Hypatia of Alexandria (ca. 355-415) Gabrielle du Châtelet (1706-1749) Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) Marie-Sophie Germain (1776-1831) Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) Christine Ladd-Franklin (1847-1930)

  5. Sofia Kovalevskaia (1850-1890) Charlotte Angas Scott (1858-1931) Grace Chisolm Young (1868-1944) Emmy Noether (1882-1935) Ann Johnson Pell Wheeler (1883-1966) Dame Mary Cartwright (1900-1998) Mina Rees (1902-1997) Ruth Moufang (1905-1977) Olga Taussky-Todd (1906-1995)

  6. Grace Hopper (1906-1992) Emma Lehmer (1906-2007) Cora Ratto de Sadosky (1912-1981) Hanna Neumann (1914-1971) Julia Bowman Robinson (1919-1985) Olga Ladyzhenskaya (1922-2004) Olga Arsen’enva Oleinik (1925-2001) Etta Zubner Falconer (1933-2002) Over 30% of all U. S. Ph. Ds. in math now are women. Biological change? Oh, sure.

  7. You can still buy the colorful MAA “Women of Math” poster • http://www.maa.org/pubs/posterW.pdf

  8. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780 – 850) Name Latinized as Algorismus Name then confused with Arithmos Name & method became “Algorithm” _________________________________ His book: Al-kitab al-muhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa’l’muqabala became“Algebra”

  9. The picture illustrates a bow and bowstring, or cord, or (Greek) “chord”

  10. The sine is the half-chord

  11. Since the sine is the half-chord: Sanskrit: jya - ardha (chord –half) Shortened into jya or jiva Transliterated into Arabic as: jiba RD WTHT VWLS: jaib = bay, inlet, cavity Translated into Latin as: Sinus

  12. 3. There wasn’t any real mathematics in the European Middle Ages. After the decline of Greek mathematics, nothing important happened mathematically in Europe until the Renaissance.

  13. Merton mean-speed theorem If the velocity is changing uniformly, Distance covered in time t = distance covered by average speed (Vmax+ Vmin)/2 in the same time Stated by William of Heytesbury, 1335, at Merton College, Oxford

  14. Diagram is first drawn by Nicole Oresme, 1350Area under velocity graph= distance covered in time t= distance covered by average speed (Vmax+ Vmin)/2in the same time

  15. Oresme’s diagram

  16. Galileo’s diagram, from his epoch-making book Two New Sciences, 1633

  17. 1/2 + 2/4 + 3/8 + 4/16 + 5/32 + …k/2k+ … Sum? 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 +…= 1 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 +…= 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 +…= 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/32 +…= 1/8 + 1/32 +…= 1/16, etc. Right column adds up to2 So the sum is 2. This solution is due to Richard Swineshead (Suiseth), 14th century, nicknamed “Calculator.”

  18. Proof that the harmonic series diverges:Nicole Oresme, 14th Century 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6 + 1/7 + 1/8 +… = 1/2 + (1/3 + 1/4) + (1/5 + 1/6 + 1/7 + 1/8) +… ≥ 1/2 + (1/ 4 + 1/ 4) + (1/8 + 1/8 + 1/8 + 1/8) + … = 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/ 2 + . .. which exceeds any given quantity.

  19. 4. Newton invented the calculus just so he could do his physics.

  20. D. T. Whiteside, ed., The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, 8 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1967 – 1981 The papers on the discovery of the calculus are in Volume I, covering 1664 – 1666 (in Latin – sorry!)

  21. 5. Serious statistical thinking in the sciences begins in the natural sciences; the social sciences learned this from natural science and copied it so they’d look scientific.

  22. Adolphe Quetelet, 1796-1874

  23. Quetelet: “Curve of possibilities”: 1830s

  24. Quetelet, heights of French conscripts, early 19th century (dip in graph greatly exaggerated)1.57 meters N = 100,000. < 1.57 m, 2275 more than predictedBetween 1.570 and 1.624 m, 2114 fewer than predicted

  25. The mathematical approach can solve any problem.

  26. Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789 - 1857) • Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857)

  27. Check it out! Victor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics: An Introduction (a 950-page Introduction) Best is the Third Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2009

  28. “Convergence”: Using historical materials to teach mathematics http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/46/ History and Pedagogy of Mathematics Newsletter: http://www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/hpm/NewsLetters.htm

  29. Let’s ask again: Why should historical truth matter to teachers of mathematics? • Examples • Mathematical practice • In general, truth matters. • Mathematics evolves.

More Related