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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Descartes Comes Out Of The Closet, Nora E. Culik
Descartes Comes Out Of The Closet, Nora E. Culik
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
While “Descartes Comes Out of the Closet” is ostensibly about a young woman’s journey to Paris, the descriptive detail borrows language and images from Cartesian coordinate geometry, dualistic philosophy, neuroanatomy (the pineal), and projections of three dimensions onto planes. This mathematical universe is counterpointed in the natural language of the suppressed love story that locates the real in the human. Thus, at the heart of the story is the tension between competing notions of mathematics, i.e., as either an independent realm apart from history or as a culturally produced and historical set of practices. Of course, the central character proves …
Paul's Dilemma: Is This A Polyhedron?, Bethany Noblitt, Shelly Harkness
Paul's Dilemma: Is This A Polyhedron?, Bethany Noblitt, Shelly Harkness
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Teachers play the believing game when they honor students’ mathematical thinking, even when it means they must suspend their own mathematical thinking momentarily. The study reported here tells the story of what happened in a university mathematics classroom when one student did not think that a particular figure satisfied the definition of a polyhedron and the instructor chose to play the believing game. The result was a very rich discussion, where both students and the authors grappled with their own mathematical understanding. One author served as the instructor of the course and the other author was an observer, taking field …