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Mesopotamian rhetorical and syncopated algebra

Trying to understand the form of algebra used by the Babylonians was very difficult for me. It reminded me of brain teasers I’ll run into on the internet sometimes, where I must read the sentence 10 times over to even begin to make sense out of it. During the reading, I found myself trying to convert the problems into algebraic problems using all the modern symbols we have now. It felt like the only way I was able to process the information I was reading. It makes me think about how in class it was mentioned that rhetorical algebra was seen as the easiest form of algebra for the Babylonians, and that the other two forms were more challenging. For me, I feel like the difficulty scale works in the other direction, where I feel I need the algebraic tools I’ve learnt to decipher these sorts of problems. It makes me wonder if I had learnt rhetorical algebra before learning about the tools I have now, which I would find more intuitive.  I find this is a great example of how math does not...
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Time calculation readings

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I had never really thought deeply about why our system for time was the way it was. This is funny to me because I find I’m so quick to point out that the imperial system is confusing and how it's way easier to use the metric system. I now realize that the metric system is in part more intuitive because it uses the decimal system (and because it’s the system I’ve used my whole life, so I’m used to it). However, since I’ve only had the one way to think about time, I’ve never really thought about why there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, or 12 months in the year. I found it surprising that the article from Scientific America attributed Egyptians to using a base 12 system to develop hours in a day, whereas the article from Mac Tutor claimed that no major civilization used the base 12 system. I was surprised to read that minutes and seconds come from dividing the degrees of latitude and longitude into smaller segments. I’ve never thought about tim...
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Base 60 multiplication table for the number 45

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Crest of a Peacock Introduction - Reflection

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While reading this chapter, I was surprised to find out about how the Greeks attributed the Egyptians to be a significant help in the learning and development of their own mathematics, in contrast with how Europeans claimed that their knowledge came almost solely from the Greeks, and that math used by the Egyptians was dismissed as “little importance to the later history of the subject” (p. 4). This was surprising to me since the text mentions that the Eurocentric model views Europe as the inheritor of Greek heritage, but at the same time the credit that was given by Greek people is ignored by their “descendants”.  I was also surprised by how vast the connections are between different cultures who shared math from the 5th to 15th century. I hadn’t realized how far individuals during this time could and would travel in the pursuit of knowledge. For example, having places like Baghdad and India or Baghdad and Cordoba having direct paths to sharing knowledge (Figure 1.3) is really fas...
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Why teach math history response

 Prior to the reading, I feel that math history seems important to incorporate into my own math teaching, to make the subject feel more grounded in reality and relevant to more students. From my experience, math can be a very abstract topic that students often have difficulty grasping. By connecting the subject to a historical context (perhaps to motivate the lesson as well), I believe that more students would be able to connect to the material presented, as they would have more ways to relate it to their own lives and other topics. Throughout the reading, once concept I found interesting was exploring math history as a tool for teachers to identify points of friction within student learning (page 211). I have forgotten in some ways what it’s like to learn basic trigonometry or algebra, and thus I can imagine having a hard time understanding why students are stuck on certain steps of learning. I think this gives an interesting way to help solve this disconnect between many teachers...
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Hello world

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2nd blog!  
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