Takeaway #2 – The Story Of Mathematics

One of my favorite parts of teaching middle and high school math has been the ability to incorporate history into the subject. This idea to incorporate history and the story of mathematics is something that has become a recent trend within the math education community; however, it has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My dad teaches math at the university level, and he would always go on about math history and philosophy. Growing up, I never thought much about it. I love history, so learning about math history and philosophy was fun for me, but I never realized how it shaped me. It has now become an integral part of how I view and teach mathematics. I have found that incorporating the history of mathematics makes the subject make more sense. Rather than just a bunch of random ideas, theorems, and rules; all of the pieces make sense in terms of a bigger puzzle. The history of mathematics is the story of humanity.

One book that greatly influenced me and my teaching this past year was The Crest of the Peacock by George Gheverghese Joseph. This book outlines the history of mathematics from a non-western view. It examines the rich history of mathematics from India, China, Egypt, and the Ancient Near East. This book allowed me to incorporate a deeper and more diverse idea of the story of mathematics in my classroom. I also was able to use the digital timeline from Mathigon (found here) to give students a comprehensive view.

I incorporated this into my teaching in two ways. First, at the start of new units (or topics), I would give a brief overview of the math history related to the topic. I would spend 5-10 minutes just talking to my students about it and showing the questions that progressed in different cultures to lead to the topic we are studying. Second, as we hit bigger themes in mathematics (Pythagorean Theorem, Pascal’s Triangle, etc) I would spend roughly a class period just storytelling about famous mathematicians or ideas. This would be very informal with lots of questions. It requires lots of reading to be able to answer most questions, but there were always questions I had to tell students I don’t know the answer to. I would research them and then come back as soon as possible to answer them.

Students tended to respond very positively to this. As with most things in the classroom that are non-traditional, it did take time for students to adjust and understand why we are doing it.  At first, they just enjoyed not doing formal mathematics and enjoyed the break. As we progressed through the year, however, students got more and more engaged. They were interested in the “why” of mathematics and the story behind it. If I ever forgot to include the history of a topic, many times students would stop me mid-lesson and tell me I forgot to go over the history. 

This is a topic that I have grown more passionate about the longer I incorporate it into my teaching. It does take a lot of work and can lead to a lot of reading but I have found it is well worth it. 

If are in need of resources for this or just want to talk about the story of mathematics just send me a message!