Jovan Choongh - Math History

Manvir and I did a short story geared towards secondary math students where the story incorporates modern day football and a historical lesson on parabolic motion. Thinking about the history of math, I think one of the centric themes of this course was to be able to tie in history of math into practical lessons to teach your secondary students. Thus, we looked at the maths that go into throwing a football, and how fundamental parabolic trajectory and projectile motion are to the sport. Therefore, our idea was to use a possible scenario where the quarterback wants to throw further independent of strength, and what parameters of his throw he can change (as per parabolic motion) to increase distance in the horizontal direction. We did a deep dive into how Galileo proved the fact horizontal and vertical velocities are independent components, and what parameters affect each vector. After our research, we decided a short story/play would be a very interesting medium! -- The...

Project: The history of throwing javelin and the mathematics of objects with parabolic projections. Javelin was first seen in the Ancient Olympic Games beginning in 700 B.C. Manvir and I plan to dissect the origins of mathematical analysis where ancient mathematicians attempted to improve  throws using calculations. We will then integrate a tie-in to modern throwing of objects and discuss modern maths around parabolic projections and how the weight of objects comes in to play. We will be performing a demo video.

I would definitely introduce these ideas as a teacher to secondary math students because of the imagination involved in attaching personalities to numbers could be inspiring to certain students. Additionally, it was interesting to read Major's perspective on social numbers and the experiences of individuals who have OLP; imagine teaching students who have never heard about synaesthesia and how individuals can make deep connections and pairing with abstractions such as letters and numbers. Perhaps, this would enable secondary math students to think of math in a perspective never taught to them before. Additionally, I think Major's discussion on personal cultural associations with a number is a sleek way to tie in history, adding a personal touch to a variety of cultural backgrounds to connect with a diverse group of students. I was shocked to learn that "in the Korean and Chinese languages, the unlucky quality of “four” is connected to the fact that it sounds like the wor...

Prior to this reading, I knew nothing about the development of medieval arithmetic and its progression from the trivium and quadrivium. Thus, it was shocking to learn that the processes of defining liberal arts and what studies should be rudimentary to one's education were discussed in medieval times over 2000 years ago; an important topic of discussion regardless of era. I was overwhelmed by the sheer fact many of these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers such as Plato and Seneca were concerned in the composition of education and what should be taught and for how long. Additionally, something that really made me stop was ancient Greece's definition of "logistics" where they wanted differentiate the arithmetic of business from the study of number, which was solely "arithmetic." Subsequently, the greeks differentiated logic from logistic, where logistic was a study for children and slaves, whereas logic was for the "free man." As I read I cont...

Reading the discussion in the paper about the designing of the dances fascinated me because of the intuition of the authors to relate the steps of the geometric constructions of the propositions to the the sequential nature of choreography; quite logical inspiration produce such a short film. Additionally, the notion that "proofs unfold in time" similar to dance is intriguing, and makes me think of mathematics in a completely different way. Never had I pondered mathematics being used to choreograph a dance before, and now I think that perhaps dance is essentially mathematical in its nature. I really enjoyed watching the simplicity behind Proposition 1 because I believe it can be embodied quite well by the human limbs in a way that is intuitive to visually perceive. At the end of Proposition 1 dance, the ease of which the arms match (the close approximation) is amazing in its analogy to an equilateral triangle. When Manvir and I attempted to execute dancing Euclidean proof...

Euclid I think Euclid and Euclidean geometry has remained relevant and continually studied throughout history because of the consequential construction of concepts Euclid builds throughout Elements. The first six books, which dealing with plane geometry, attempt to build and demonstrate very basic properties of shapes and geometric elements such as triangles, parallelograms, squares, and rectangles. I believe that Euclid's laying of such fundamental ideas on basic plane geometry is what lures individuals and scholars to constantly refer back to his work. Additionally, as scholars recognized his work as remarkable and respected the vigour, it became the "primary source of geometric reasoning" as stated by van der Waerden; when the mathematics community recognized the clarity of the Elements it created a snowball effect of its popularity. Referring to Proposition 6 from Heath's translation of Book 1 of the Elements, I believe this is a principle we are ta...