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Full-Text Articles in Education

Book Review: Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, And History By Stephen Chrisomalis, Milton Rosa, Daniel Clark Orey Jan 2022

Book Review: Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, And History By Stephen Chrisomalis, Milton Rosa, Daniel Clark Orey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review of Reckonings shares our thoughts on the diverse insights presented by Stephen Chrisomalis’s version of the history of numerical notation. Chrisomalis suggests that members of distinct cultural groups write numbers as an active choice in accordance with their own sociocultural contexts, which reflect the influences of historical, cognitive, social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural factors. This book integrates comparative, cognitive, and evolutionary understandings on numerical cognition with historical and linguistic evidence on the use and transformation of numeral systems through the historical advancement of numeracy. Chrisomalis offers an interesting historical perspective on numbers that builds upon three main …


Recognizing Mathematics Students As Creative: Mathematical Creativity As Community-Based And Possibility-Expanding, Meghan Riling Jul 2020

Recognizing Mathematics Students As Creative: Mathematical Creativity As Community-Based And Possibility-Expanding, Meghan Riling

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Although much creativity research has suggested that creativity is influenced by cultural and social factors, these have been minimally explored in the context of mathematics and mathematics learning. This problematically limits who is seen as mathematically creative and who can enter the discipline of mathematics. This paper proposes a framework of creativity that is based in what it means to know or do mathematics and accepts that creativity is something that can be nurtured in all students. Prominent mathematical epistemologies held since the beginning of the twentieth century in the Western mathematics tradition have different implications for promoting creativity in …


Book Review: What Is A Mathematical Concept? Edited By Elizabeth De Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, And Alf Coles, Brendan P. Larvor Jul 2019

Book Review: What Is A Mathematical Concept? Edited By Elizabeth De Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, And Alf Coles, Brendan P. Larvor

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a review of What is a Mathematical Concept? edited by Elizabeth de Freitas, Nathalie Sinclair, and Alf Coles (Cambridge University Press, 2017). In this collection of sixteen chapters, philosophers, educationalists, historians of mathematics, a cognitive scientist, and a mathematician consider, problematise, historicise, contextualise, and destabilise the terms ‘mathematical’ and ‘concept’. The contributors come from many disciplines, but the editors are all in mathematics education, which gives the whole volume a disciplinary centre of gravity. The editors set out to explore and reclaim the canonical question ‘what is a mathematical concept?’ from the philosophy of mathematics. This review comments …


Academia Will Not Save You: Stories Of Being Continually “Underrepresented”, Lynette Deaun Guzmán Jan 2019

Academia Will Not Save You: Stories Of Being Continually “Underrepresented”, Lynette Deaun Guzmán

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

My entire life I have had to navigate educational structures labeled (by other people) as “underrepresented” in my fields—mathematics and mathematics education. As many people who are similarly labeled in this way know, this meant I had to navigate oppressive structures that positioned me as lesser (e.g., white supremacy, patriarchy). Making sense of these repeated interactions, I wrote my dissertation as a series of three articles, each prefaced with an essay that situated a broader social, cultural, and political context and also connected to my lived experiences navigating academia. These essays were some of my most personal academic writing, and …


Symmetry And Measuring: Ways To Teach The Foundations Of Mathematics Inspired By Yupiaq Elders, Jerry Lipka, Barbara Adams, Monica Wong, David Koester, Karen Francois Jan 2019

Symmetry And Measuring: Ways To Teach The Foundations Of Mathematics Inspired By Yupiaq Elders, Jerry Lipka, Barbara Adams, Monica Wong, David Koester, Karen Francois

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Evident in human prehistory and across immense cultural variation in human activities, symmetry has been perceived and utilized as an integrative and guiding principle. In our long-term collaborative work with Indigenous Knowledge holders, particularly Yupiaq Eskimos of Alaska and Carolinian Islanders in Micronesia, we were struck by the centrality of symmetry and measuring as a comparison-of-quantities, and the practical and conceptual role of qukaq [center] and ayagneq [a place to begin]. They applied fundamental mathematical principles associated with symmetry and measuring in their everyday activities and in making artifacts. Inspired by their example, this paper explores the question: Could symmetry …


Wabi-Sabi Mathematics, Jean-Francois Maheux Jan 2016

Wabi-Sabi Mathematics, Jean-Francois Maheux

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Mathematics and aesthetics have a long history in common. In this relation however, the aesthetic dimension of mathematics largely refers to concepts such as purity, absoluteness, symmetry, and so on. In stark contrast to such a nexus of ideas, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi values imperfections, temporality, incompleteness, earthly crudeness, and even contradiction. In this paper, I discuss the possibilities of “wabi-sabi mathematics” by showing (1) how wabi-sabi mathematics is conceivable; (2) how wabi-sabi mathematics is observable; and (3) why we should bother about wabi-sabi mathematics


Pigs Feet, Jesse W. Standlea Sep 2015

Pigs Feet, Jesse W. Standlea

The STEAM Journal

My sculpture “Pigs Feet” has literal foundations upon casts of live pig’s feet. I locally sourced the pig’s feet before casting them. My sculpture makes use of a once cutting edge casting technology, alginate. Alginate molds were once the standard in dentistry. Alginate is an appealing casting material as it is refined from brown seaweeds, is both food and skin safe, it is suitable for educators, for artists and engineers alike.


An Awareness Of What Is Missing: Four Views On The Consequences Of Secularism, Rachel E. Hunt Steenblik, Heidi Zameni, Debbie Ostorga, Nathan Greeley Nov 2013

An Awareness Of What Is Missing: Four Views On The Consequences Of Secularism, Rachel E. Hunt Steenblik, Heidi Zameni, Debbie Ostorga, Nathan Greeley

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

While the issues regarding widespread secularization in contemporary Western culture are difficult to properly assess, it can be argued that certain prerequisites are necessary for the well-being of any society and, furthermore, that certain of these necessary conditions are only provided by a given civilization's major religious tradition. All societies need to perpetually engage in collective action and decision making, and as any given community faces the challenges of the future, its governing religious worldview is an indispensable source of guidance and time-honored wisdom. With this in mind, it will be argued that Western civilization is dependent upon a Judeo-Christian …


Teaching The Complex Numbers: What History And Philosophy Of Mathematics Suggest, Emily R. Grosholz Jan 2013

Teaching The Complex Numbers: What History And Philosophy Of Mathematics Suggest, Emily R. Grosholz

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the …


Man's Cards And God's Dice: A Conceptual Analysis Of Probability For The Advanced Student, Elie Feder Jan 2004

Man's Cards And God's Dice: A Conceptual Analysis Of Probability For The Advanced Student, Elie Feder

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


Humanizing Mathematics: The Humanistic Impression In The Course For Mathematics Teaching, Ada Katsap Jun 2002

Humanizing Mathematics: The Humanistic Impression In The Course For Mathematics Teaching, Ada Katsap

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


The Role Of Values In Mathematics Education, Murad Jurdak Dec 1999

The Role Of Values In Mathematics Education, Murad Jurdak

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


Some Notes On How Students Perceive Mathematics, Joan Countryman Feb 1995

Some Notes On How Students Perceive Mathematics, Joan Countryman

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


Philosophy Of Mathematics, Mathematics Education, And Philosophy Of Mathematics Education, Yuxin Zheng Feb 1994

Philosophy Of Mathematics, Mathematics Education, And Philosophy Of Mathematics Education, Yuxin Zheng

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


The Role Of Faith In Mathematics, Dick Wood Jul 1993

The Role Of Faith In Mathematics, Dick Wood

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


The Humanistic Aspects Of Mathematics And Their Importance, Philip J. Davis May 1990

The Humanistic Aspects Of Mathematics And Their Importance, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


A Reply To The Question "Why Math?", Louis A. Talman Mar 1988

A Reply To The Question "Why Math?", Louis A. Talman

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.


Applied Mathematics As Social Contract, Philip J. Davis Jun 1987

Applied Mathematics As Social Contract, Philip J. Davis

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

The author takes the position that mathematical education must redefine its goals so as to create a citizenry with sufficient knowledge to provide social backpressure on future mathematizations. This can be accomplished by increasing the part of mathematical education that is devoted to the description and interpretation of the processes of mathematization and by allowing the technicalities of the formal operations within mathematics itself to be deemphasized or automated out by computer.