Jovan Choongh - Math History

Reflecting back on this course, it has been one of my favourite courses taken in my entire university career. I feel as though the interactive lectures and engaging history lessons were very fun.  I really enjoyed learning different methods of solving mathematical problems and different ways of conceptualizing mathematics. Specifically, when looking at how the Egyptians went about completing multiplication and division, I was in shock because growing up we were only taught a select few methods, and any new method or perspective is very counter-intuitive, thus, learning the Egyptian method was critical in widening my scope on how important the history of mathematics is. Egyptian mathematics continued to resonate with me, I also really enjoyed learning about regula falsi and the method of false position, and how its expansions give real intuition into modern day algebra. For me, to think of a world without the existence of algebra is absurd and thus reading about Ahmes and regula...

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.