"Numbers with Personality" Reflection

 Alice Major’s article, “Numbers with Personality” was delightfully intriguing! It connected so nicely to Myron Medina’s presentation on Mayan Mathematics, and I quite enjoyed learning about the head variants, social numbers, ordinal linguistic personification, mathematical elements of synesthesia, and Ramanujan’s taxicab number. Something that I found particularly interesting was that the Mayan’s visual connection with numbers overlaps quite a bit with Ramanujan’s personified relationship with numbers; perhaps it alludes to a connection between these types of learners and grasp of mathematics (and perhaps it doesn’t). Ramanujan’s remarkably exceptional ability to see numbers in the way that most of us couldn’t, no doubt led to parts of his success. And, what is certain, is that the relationship that we form with numbers, in terms of self and culture, has an impact on our perception of the world. 

"Dancing Euclidean Proofs" Reflection

Before reading the paper, I struggled to make a logical connection between geometric proofs and dance, and was fairly curious as to why they chose to represent Euclid’s proofs in that medium. As breath-taking as their choreography was, it simply wasn’t the rigorous and permanent style of proof that we’re used to. So, the first comment the stood to me was “our first step was to make explicit for ourselves that rationale for translating these proofs as dance.” And they provided marvellously comprehensive and convincing points as to why it made sense! Though the topic was specific, their arguments are easily applicable to expressing math in any form, available to all types of learners. Their embodied visualization is particularly applicable to visual, kinaesthetic, logical, and naturalist learners, which reiterates that learning math isn’t confined to any learning style, and directly synthesizes a hands-on experience with learning math. 

"Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare" and "The Euclidean Domain" Reflections

Euclid of Alexandria, aka the 'Father of Geometry', has been given the honour of being one of the greatest mathematical thinkers of all time, due to his contributions to geometry and number theory. Not only are all 13 volumes of Euclid’s Elements an astounding and comprehensive explanation of mathematical ideas at that time, they also provided some source of inspiration to other greats such as Sir Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Bertrand Russel, and Ada Lovelace! Despite the fact that there is quite little known about Euclid himself, his works have paved the way for so many different topics in mathematics. Some of his most popular work include the 5 axioms of geometry, a prime number theory, a perfect number theory, and defining the greatest common divisor.