Download or read book Africa and Mathematics written by Dirk Huylebrouck and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume on ethnomathematics in Central Africa fills a gap in the current literature, focusing on a region rarely explored by other publications. It highlights the discovery of the Ishango rod, which was found to be the oldest mathematical tool in humanity's history, thereby shifting the origin of mathematics to the heart of Africa, and explores the different scientific hypotheses that emerged as a result. While it contains some high-level mathematics, the non-mathematical reader can easily skip these portions and enjoy the book’s survey of African history, culture, and art.
Download or read book African Mathematics written by Abdul Karim Bangura and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive text on African Mathematics that can be used to address some of the problematic issues in this area. These issues include attitudes, curriculum development, educational change, academic achievement, standardized and other tests, performance factors, student characteristics, cross-cultural differences and studies, literacy, native speakers, social class and differences, equal education, teaching methods, knowledge level, educational guidelines and policies, transitional schools, comparative education, other subjects such as physics and social studies, surveys, talent, educational research, teacher education and qualifications, academic standards, teacher effectiveness, lesson plans and modules, teacher characteristics, instructional materials, program effectiveness, program evaluation, African culture, African history, Black studies, class activities, educational games, number systems, cognitive ability, foreign influence, and fundamental concepts. What unifies the chapters in this book can appear rather banal, but many mathematical insights are so obvious and so fundamental that they are difficult to absorb, appreciate, and express with fresh clarity. Some of the more basic insights are isolated by accounts of investigators who have earned their contemporaries' respect. Winner of the 2012 Cecil B. Currey Book Award.
Download or read book Geometry from Africa written by Paulus Gerdes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-09-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on geometric ideas from cultural activities from Subsaharan Africa to develop mathematical reasoning.
Download or read book The Art of More written by Michael Brooks and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating, millennia-spanning history of the impact mathematics has had on the world, and the fascinating people who have mastered its inherent power Counting is not innate to our nature, and without education humans can rarely count past three — beyond that, it’s just “more.” But once harnessed by our ancestors, the power of numbers allowed humanity to flourish in ways that continue to lead to discoveries and enrich our lives today. Ancient tax collectors used basic numeracy to fuel the growth of early civilization, navigators used clever geometrical tricks to engage in trade and connect people across vast distances, astronomers used logarithms to unlock the secrets of the heavens, and their descendants put them to use to land us on the moon. In every case, mathematics has proved to be a greatly underappreciated engine of human progress. In this captivating, sweeping history, Michael Brooks acts as our guide through the ages. He makes the case that mathematics was one of the foundational innovations that catapulted humanity from a nomadic existence to civilization, and that it has since then been instrumental in every great leap of humankind. Here are ancient Egyptian priests, Babylonian bureaucrats, medieval architects, dueling Swiss brothers, renaissance painters, and an eccentric professor who invented the infrastructure of the online world. Their stories clearly demonstrate that the invention of mathematics was every bit as important to the human species as was the discovery of fire. From first page to last, The Art of More brings mathematics back into the heart of what it means to be human.
Download or read book African Fractals written by Ron Eglash and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fractals are characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales. Fractal geometry has emerged as one of the most exciting frontiers on the border between mathematics and information technology and can be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics. It has become a new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences. Anthropologists have observed that the patterns produced in different cultures can be characterized by specific design themes. In Europe and America, we often see cities laid out in a grid pattern of straight streets and right-angle corners. In contrast, traditional African settlements tend to use fractal structures-circles of circles of circular dwellings, rectangular walls enclosing ever-smaller rectangles, and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition. These indigenous fractals are not limited to architecture; their recursive patterns echo throughout many disparate African designs and knowledge systems. Drawing on interviews with African designers, artists, and scientists, Ron Eglash investigates fractals in African architecture, traditional hairstyling, textiles, sculpture, painting, carving, metalwork, religion, games, practical craft, quantitative techniques, and symbolic systems. He also examines the political and social implications of the existence of African fractal geometry. His book makes a unique contribution to the study of mathematics, African culture, anthropology, and computer simulations.
Download or read book What Mathematics from Africa written by Giandomenico Sica and published by Polimetrica s.a.s.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Africa Counts written by Claudia Zaslavsky and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Study by a mathematical scholar on the ways in which African people count, keep time and records, play games, use geometry in art and architecture, etc. Based on research in Nigeria and East Africa.
Download or read book Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa written by Victor J. Katz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This sourcebook presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon’s use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Mu’taman Ibn Hūd’s extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron’s Theorem and Ceva’s Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī’s interesting proof of Euclid’s parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references. The Sourcebook in the Mathematics of Medieval Europe and North Africa will be indispensable to anyone seeking out the important historical sources of premodern mathematics.
Download or read book Education in Sub Saharan Africa written by Kirsten Majgaard and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Comparative Analysis takes stock of education in Sub-Saharan Africa by drawing on the collective knowledge gained through the preparation of Country Status Reports for more than 30 countries.
Download or read book Beyond Eurocentrism written by Ediho Kengete Ta Koi Lokanga and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable work, Dr. Ediho Lokanga, the author of the bestselling book, Digital Physics: The Meaning of the Holographic Universe and Its Implications Beyond Theoretical Physics, presents a synopsis of mathematical activities in Africa over the last few centuries. Relying on several historical works and direct knowledge of various academic sources, combined with his mathematical background, the author draws a rich picture of mathematical activity in Africa, stressing the critical and fundamental contributions made by ancient Africans in the field of mathematics. Beyond Eurocentrism: The African Origins of Mathematics and Writing fills a gap in the current literature focusing on Africa, a continent rarely explored by scholars in academia.
Download or read book Decolonising Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics STEM in an Age of Technocolonialism written by Nhemachena, Artwell and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Positing the notions of coloniality of ignorance and geopolitics of ignorance as central to coloniality and colonisation, this book examines how colonialists socially produced ignorance among colonised indigenous peoples so as to render them docile and manageable. Dismissing colonial descriptions of indigenous people as savages, illiterate, irrational, prelogical, mystical, primitive, barbaric and backward, the book argues that imperialists/colonialists contrived geopolitics of ignorance wherein indigenous regions were forced to become ignorant, hence containable and manageable in the imperial world. Questioning the provenance of modernist epistemologies, the book asks why Eurocentric scholars only contest the provenance of indigenous knowledges, artefacts and scientific collections. Interrogating why empire sponsors the decolonisation of universities/epistemologies in indigenous territories while resisting the repatriation/restitution of indigenous artefacts, the book also wonders why Westerners who still retain indigenous artefacts, skulls and skeletons in their museums, universities and private collections do not consider such artefacts and skulls to be colonising them as well. The book is valuable to scholars and activists in the fields of anthropology, museums and heritage studies, science and technology studies, decoloniality, policymaking, education, politics, sociology and development studies.
Download or read book A History of Chinese Mathematics written by Jean-Claude Martzloff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-08-17 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is made up of two parts, the first devoted to general, historical and cultural background, and the second to the development of each subdiscipline that together comprise Chinese mathematics. The book is uniquely accessible, both as a topical reference work, and also as an overview that can be read and reread at many levels of sophistication by both sinologists and mathematicians alike.
Download or read book Science and an African Logic written by Helen Verran and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-12-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does two and two equal four? Ask someone and they should answer yes. An equation such as this seems the very definition of certainty, but is it? In this book, Helen Verran addresses precisely that question.
Download or read book Mathematics Across Cultures written by Helaine Selin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematics Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Mathematics consists of essays dealing with the mathematical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Inca, Egyptian, and African mathematics, among others, the book includes essays on Rationality, Logic and Mathematics, and the transfer of knowledge from East to West. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate the mathematical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Download or read book Ethnomathematics written by Arthur B. Powell and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the emerging field of ethnomathematics from a critical perspective, challenging particular ways in which Eurocentrism permeates mathematics education and mathematics in general.
Download or read book Mathematics Education in East Africa written by Anjum Halai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Open Access book is a valuable resource for policymakers and practitioners as it brings insights mainly from developing countries where relatively less research activity takes place. It is also a valuable resource for courses in mathematics education in the teacher education colleges, and departments of education in the sub-Saharan Africa region. In the increasingly global and technological world mathematics is seen as a significant gatekeeper of opportunities for social and economic advancement and mobility. Hence, countries and development agencies in the broader sub-Saharan Africa region are looking towards increasing access to relevant and high-quality secondary education as a lever towards economic development. Policy makers and other key decision makers in education look towards improvement in mathematics teaching and learning as a key focus in education reform. In the East Africa region also a number of initiatives have been taken at the national level in the respective countries to improve the quality of mathematics education. This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the developments and issues in mathematics education in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda, and advances our understanding of the state of secondary mathematics education in East Africa.
Download or read book The Language Issue in the Teaching of Mathematics in South Africa written by Lindiwe Tshuma and published by African Sun Media. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is the result of a five-year project that culminated (within the first three years) in doctoral research interrogating language competency for meaningful mathematics instruction at upper primary level conducted at University of Stellenbosch in 2017; and this book in the succeeding two years. The initial research project received countrywide coverage in several South African media outlets including Times Live and Radio 2000.
