Course Reflection

When looking back at my time in this class, I can genuinely say that it was one of the best, most interesting courses that I have taken during my undergraduate degree. I thoroughly enjoyed every lecture and learned new things that I hadn't ever studied or looked into deeply before. As a finance student, we use math quite a bit (albeit not in the most traditional sense) however I have never really thought about the origins and history of mathematics.

I found the Mayan history of mathematics to be one of the most interesting things that we learned about during the semester. I found this to be especially interesting to me as I have traveled and seen the Mayan ruins in Mexico as a child, and I can recall this being quite interesting to me. My family travels to Mexico every Christmas, and it was incredibly interesting to learn about how advanced they were, with seemingly no outside information.

I think that one of the best parts about this class was how diverse our classroom was. There were people from all different backgrounds and majors in that class, which made discussions and activities very fun and interesting. I would definitely recommend this class to my peers as Sue and Amanda did a great job of making sure that everyone was involved and enjoying the class. Thank you guys for an incredible semester!

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyDecember 26, 2019 at 7:03 PM

    Thanks very much for your reflections, Imryn! I'm really glad that you enjoyed the course, and I appreciate your contributions to the class. I hope that this year's trip to Mexico was enriched by sharing your knowledge of Mayan mathematics with your family -- really amazing cultural history, isn't it? All the best!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Word Problem using Unit Fractions

A man who had 12 horses and 3 children wrote in his will to leave 1/2 of his horses to Pat, 1/3 to Chris, and 1/12 to Sam. However, just after he died, one of his horses died too. How will the children divide the 11 remaining horses in order to follow the instructions of the will? There were twelve horses that should be given to the man’s children; one half of twelve horses, that is six, to Pat, one third of twelve horses, that is four, to Chris, and one twelfth of twelve horses to Sam. The total number of horses distributed to the children is eleven, because 6 + 4 + 1 = 11. Therefore, although one horse died, the children will have no issue inheriting horses to follow the instruction of the will. We can use unit fractions when dividing up things that don’t divide cleanly (ie. have lots of decimals). We can use fractions to avoid these long numbers. I do think that the benefits havent changed much from back then, the outcome is the same we just have different ways of reac...
Read more

Why Babylon used the 60 number base system

Image
When doing the in-class exercise analyzing the Babylonian mathematics system, I was initially very confused about what the different symbols they used represented. However, after spending some time looking at the symbols and comparing them to the next multiple, I found out that they used a base-60 system. I wondered why they did this, as a base 10 system seemed much simpler to me, so I decided to do some research on it. I found out that this was likely due to the fact that there are 5 fingers on one hand and five multiplied by twelve equals sixty. I think that the number sixty is special because it has twelve factors compared to ten which has 3, therefore it has more divisors. Sixty is significant for many things in our daily lives, but especially for how we keep time. It is a good number to use for time-keeping and many other things because of the number of divisors it has. I never really noticed our usage of the number 60, but doing this exercise has opened my eyes to exactly how m...
Read more

Euclid's Importance Throughout History

A)      Euclid is one of the most well-known mathematicians in the history of the world. Not much is known about his life, but know that his book, The Elements is a vital piece for the evolution of mathematics. He is studied today because is book is world-renowned and used by mathematicians around the world. They give Euclid credit combining many of these ideas and concepts. Euclid is often mistaken for Euclid of Megera, as many people thought that he was from here, but they were later corrected. Euclid of Megera was actually a philosopher who lived approximately 100 years before Euclid. He was also one of the first to study geometry. The Elements is divided into 13 different books, and the first six touch on plane geometry whereas books seven to nine look at number theory. Book 10 deals with irrational numbers and books 11-13 look into 3-dimensional geometry. Mathematicians say it is the greatest math book ever, and its concepts are timeless, one of the main rea...
Read more