Off the grid

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The first stop I had when reading this article, was about the connection of the words line and linen. We often forget how crucial the concept of a line is in geometry. Sometimes we can even think of a circle as a line that we've curved around. We manipulate the line to create other shapes, just as we manipulate the linen to make clothes. Also hearing about how people in the past knew about 3-4-5 triangles is quite interesting. A bit off topic, but also the cubic watermelons costing $200 is an insane price even for something as novel as that.

The second stop I had was when they were talking about the grids in Saskatchewan. From my knowledge, I always thought that Saskatchewan was a very flat province, so one would think a grid system would work just fine. But factoring in the curvature of the Earth is something that did not occur to me. This got me thinking about BC, we have so many mountains here that a grid system would definitely be less efficient.

In regards to indigenizing the curriculum, as always it's a tough job especially in math. One thing that helps is that this paper is mostly about geometry, and geometry is a math subject that is easily relatable to students. Geometry is something they can actually visualize, compared to something like calculus.

Comments

  1. AmandaDecember 9, 2019 at 10:53 AM

    Hugo, I agree that it is difficult to think about BC, with all it's mountains and valleys, in relationship to 2D grids. I am also interested in the discussion of how local Indigenous geographies can be a part of secondary mathematics education.

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