Don't make me regret this ...
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Don't make me regret this ...
I'm thinking of making a timeline of characters and events from history that school children might know of and be interested in. Most timelines you find are overly complex, or overly simplistic.
Who and what would you include?
I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s.
1/n
Ada Lovelace? Woman who did maths and 'computing', was also daughter of Byron, which links in the arts.
(having checked her Wiki, I see she also overcame childhood illness and disability)
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Ada Lovelace? Woman who did maths and 'computing', was also daughter of Byron, which links in the arts.
(having checked her Wiki, I see she also overcame childhood illness and disability)
@suearcher Excellent.
Also Sophie Germain, though few will have heard of her.
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@e7_87 That's exactly part of the question I want to answer. At the moment, these are (regrettably still) the ones pushed by existing literature.
That's part of what I want to address. As I said:
"I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s."
Especially from history, women are mostly missing, so it's especially important to include them, and I'm very keen to do so.
@e7_87 It's also worth noting that I am an old, Western, white dude, so my personal schooling had virtually no women mentioned, and virtually no people from Asia or the Middle East.
I now know more, but these are the things that come to my mind, and I want to make sure I influence the next generation as best I can to help prevent the bias to which I was exposed.
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@e7_87 That's exactly part of the question I want to answer. At the moment, these are (regrettably still) the ones pushed by existing literature.
That's part of what I want to address. As I said:
"I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s."
Especially from history, women are mostly missing, so it's especially important to include them, and I'm very keen to do so.
@ColinTheMathmo If I were you, I will address events more than "celebrities". It takes a village to raise a child, so it should take a whole culture to raise those great(exceptionally creative) humans, whose works are sometimes supported by other gifted but less "famous" humans .
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@suearcher Excellent.
Also Sophie Germain, though few will have heard of her.
@ColinTheMathmo Sofia Kowalewskaya maybe?
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@ColinTheMathmo If I were you, I will address events more than "celebrities". It takes a village to raise a child, so it should take a whole culture to raise those great(exceptionally creative) humans, whose works are sometimes supported by other gifted but less "famous" humans .
@e7_87 That's a great take ... I will definitely look at emphasising that.
Thank you!
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@suearcher Excellent.
Also Sophie Germain, though few will have heard of her.
Ah, yes, I had to look her up.
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Ah, yes, I had to look her up.
@suearcher This is part of the problem ... these people need to be better know, but even we need to look them up.
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@e7_87 It's also worth noting that I am an old, Western, white dude, so my personal schooling had virtually no women mentioned, and virtually no people from Asia or the Middle East.
I now know more, but these are the things that come to my mind, and I want to make sure I influence the next generation as best I can to help prevent the bias to which I was exposed.
@ColinTheMathmo And I think we could address to the kids [admit the fact...] that in pre-modern times, because most women are repressed/underprivileged, most ancient characters being described in history were males, but in 18xx/19xx/20xx, more and more females and some trans contribute exceptional work to the humanity.
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This list has mostly (but not entirely!) exactly them, but here are a few.
Which of your favourites are missing? In particular, what major historical events would school children know, to allow these to be put into some sort of historical context?
And yes, I am thinking of asking some school kids for "Famous Things".
Galileo
Nelson (Trafalgar)
Wellington (Waterloo)
Newton
Macchiavelli
Shakespeare
Pythagoras
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Archimedes
Al-Khwarizmi
Ibn Al-Haytham
Babbage
Turing
Omar Khayyam
Jabir Ibn Haiyan
Ramanujan2/n
Marie Curie
Rosalind Franklin
Ada Lovelace
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Jocelyn Bell Burnell3/n
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Marie Curie
Rosalind Franklin
Ada Lovelace
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Jocelyn Bell Burnell3/n
To some extent, I'd like people in general, children in particular, to hear of someone, then be able to put them into context.
I think this is an impossible task, so in some senses I'm looking to see why and how it's impossible, perhaps then to decrease the scope and ambition, possibly to make something useful.
Eventually.
4/n, n=4
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@ColinTheMathmo Sofia Kowalewskaya maybe?
@ColinTheMathmo also Mary Cartwright, a first in many ways, not nearly as well known as she deserves to be.
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Don't make me regret this ...
I'm thinking of making a timeline of characters and events from history that school children might know of and be interested in. Most timelines you find are overly complex, or overly simplistic.
Who and what would you include?
I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s.
1/n
Emmy Noether ?
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@e7_87 That's a great take ... I will definitely look at emphasising that.
Thank you!
@ColinTheMathmo Oh I keep getting "pop" sounds from Mastodon... This is a hot thread.
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For ancient mathematics, I would choose these 6 events/concepts, which some non-western heroes appeared:* π (See Zu Chongzhi 429-500 from ancient China, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Hui%27s_%CF%80_algorithm)
* Quadratic Equation (many non-western mathematicians worked out the quadratic formula)
* Zeno's paradoxes ( you can see some mentions of Chinese philosophers on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes#Similar_paradoxes )
* Prime Numbers
* trigonometry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometry)
* Euclid's 'Elements' (have to say it is a great work in human math history)
I think a grand human history is hard not to be biased, so why not first test on our specialization and leave behind "Macchiavelli", "Shakespeare", "Alexander the Great", ....
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Let me have some time for a partial list of important modern female heroines (and important non-binary)!
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Don't make me regret this ...
I'm thinking of making a timeline of characters and events from history that school children might know of and be interested in. Most timelines you find are overly complex, or overly simplistic.
Who and what would you include?
I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s.
1/n
@ColinTheMathmo Top two I don't see on your list -
Hypatia (feminism, science vs religion)
Eratosthenes (I get so sick of hearing that Columbus proved the Earth was round) -
This list has mostly (but not entirely!) exactly them, but here are a few.
Which of your favourites are missing? In particular, what major historical events would school children know, to allow these to be put into some sort of historical context?
And yes, I am thinking of asking some school kids for "Famous Things".
Galileo
Nelson (Trafalgar)
Wellington (Waterloo)
Newton
Macchiavelli
Shakespeare
Pythagoras
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Archimedes
Al-Khwarizmi
Ibn Al-Haytham
Babbage
Turing
Omar Khayyam
Jabir Ibn Haiyan
Ramanujan2/n
@ColinTheMathmo
The guy who made stripy pyjamas cool.
#maths
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Don't make me regret this ...
I'm thinking of making a timeline of characters and events from history that school children might know of and be interested in. Most timelines you find are overly complex, or overly simplistic.
Who and what would you include?
I'm interested in connecting science people with historical context, and pulling in non-(old dead white dude)s.
1/n
@ColinTheMathmo Colin, I teach a course at my institution called “Hi(dden)story of Mathematics” and I would be happy to share the outline of my course (and even some notes) and you could adapt some of it for your purposes.
The course is divided into units.
Unit 1 relates to ways in which our ancestors counted. We discussed the Babylonian (base 60) enumeration system, the Roman numerals, the Maya numerals (base 20), the Inca quipu (knot counting) and yupana (Inca abacus/calculator) the enumeration system of the ancient people of India, how it was adapted by the Arabs and the abacus and the Chinese counting rods.
Unit 2 relates to how ancient cultures develop ways to measure time (why does a circle have 360 degrees) along with storytelling exploring the significance/mysticism surrounding the numbers 7 and 12 (twelve tribes in Israel, twelve disciples of Jesus, twelve gods living in Olympus, twelve animals running the race for the jade emperor, twelve sons of Ishmael) why 13 is unlucky in Europe but not elsewhere, and how 13 is a sacred number instead for the Maya and the Egyptians for example. We also discuss the Maya calendar, the Jewish calendar and discuss how to convert between dates in those calendars and the Gregorian one.
Unit 3 relates to the origins on combinatorics and we discuss Acharya Pingala’s rules for enumerating verse structures in Sanskrit and realize Pingala described the binary enumerating system, the binomial coefficients and the Fibonacci numbers all based on verse structure of poetry. We connect this discovery (which happened in 400 BCE) to Fibonacci’s liber abaci and Blaise Pascal’s triangle and have a discussion on why we call them today Pascal’s triangle and Fibonacci numbers instead of Pingala’s triangle and numbers. In the end we decide that we should call them the Fibonacci-Pingala numbers and the Pascal-Pingala triangle (this eventually gets further renamed to Khayam-Pascal-Pingala triangle)
I will continue later…
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Emmy Noether ?
