People Places And Mathematics

This memoir chronicles the journey of an academic, tracing a path from primary school in Zambia to a career in higher education as a mathematician and educational leader. Set against the backdrop of the 20th century, the book explores how early influences and historical events shape an individual's life and professional trajectory. The author shares childhood experiences across three parts of Africa, providing an original perspective as a witness to the post-colonial period. Through personal reflections, the memoir delves into the emergence of ideas and collaborations in mathematics and how these shape career choices. It also offers candid observations on the major changes in British higher education since the 1980s. Intended for a general audience, this book provides a compelling read for anyone interested in the experience of becoming a mathematician, and higher education in general.

A brilliant tour of mathematical thought and a guide to becoming a better thinker, How Not to Be Wrong shows that math is not just a long list of rules to be learned and carried out by rote. Math touches everything we do; It's what makes the world make sense. Using the mathematician's methods and hard-won insights-minus the jargon-professor and popular columnist Jordan Ellenberg guides general readers through his ideas with rigor and lively irreverence, infusing everything from election results to baseball to the existence of God and the psychology of slime molds with a heightened sense of clarity and wonder. Armed with the tools of mathematics, we can see the hidden structures beneath the messy and chaotic surface of our daily lives. How Not to Be Wrong shows us how--Publisher's description.

Creating landscapes of investigation is a primary concern of critical mathematics education. It enables us to organise educational processes so that students and teachers are able to get involved in explorations guided by dialogical interactions. It attempts to address explicit or implicit forms of social injustice by means of mathematics, and also to promote a critical conception of mathematics, challenging the assumption that the subject represents objectivity and neutrality. Landscapes of Investigation provides many illustrations of how this can be done in primary, secondary, and university education. It also illustrates how exploring landscapes of investigation can contribute to mathematics teacher education programmes. This edited volume is the result of a collaboration established through the Colloquium in Research in Critical Mathematics Education, which took place in 2016, 2018, and 2019 in Brazil. Its twenty-eight contributors are young researchers from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico and the USA, who are dedicated to the further development of critical mathematics education. Organised in eighteen chapters, the volume presents examples of engaging students from a diversity of social and economic backgrounds, age ranges, and abilities across different countries. The chapters present original findings on the social aspects of all levels of mathematics education. Landscapes of Investigation is of particular relevance to those with an interest in the potential of mathematics education to challenge social injustices.

Your journey to becoming a social justice mathematics educator begins here. Every journey has a beginning—a starting point—where you take a moment to set your sights on your next destination carefully. Teaching mathematics for social justice (TMSJ) means reimagining your mathematics classroom in a way that serves more children better–as a place that lifts mathematics up as a tool for students to analyze and understand the worlds around them, celebrate their unique identities and their communities, and become agents of change. For any K-12 educator who values these goals Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice, Grades: A Guide for Moving from Mindset to Action can be the start of a transformational journey. Guiding you in planning, implementing, assessing, and showcasing social justice mathematics lessons and helping children apply their learning beyond the classroom, this book: Encourages self-reflection on the "why" of your teaching and examines your own mindset about mathematics Provides a step-by-step action plan for creating equitable and socially just mathematics classrooms that focus on rich and collaborative mathematics learning Incorporates interactive reflection prompts, self-assessments, and activities throughout the journey Describes culturally responsive teaching practices to better respond to the instructional needs of the diverse individuals in your classroom Offers activities to identify what current events and social issues are important to children and their families Inspires you to remain steadfast in their journey of growth toward becoming a social justice mathematics educator Complete with sample lessons, online resources, and practical tools, this guide will empower you to better understand the children in your classroom, leverage their strengths, and make mathematics learning relevant and useful as they use mathematics to address the issues they care about. Start your journey towards becoming a social justice mathematics educator today.

The subject of mathematics is not something distant, strange, and abstract that you can only learn about—and often dislike—in school. It is in everyday situations, such as housekeeping, communications, traffic, and weather reports. Taking you on a trip into the world of mathematics, Do I Count? Stories from Mathematics describes in a clear and captivating way the people behind the numbers and the places where mathematics is made. Written by top scientist and engaging storyteller Günter M. Ziegler and translated by Thomas von Foerster, the book presents mathematics and mathematicians in a manner that you have not previously encountered. It guides you on a scenic tour through the field, pointing out which beds were useful in constructing which theorems and which notebooks list the prizes for solving particular problems. Forgoing esoteric areas, the text relates mathematics to celebrities, history, travel, politics, science and technology, weather, clever puzzles, and the future. Can bees count? Is 13 bad luck? Are there equations for everything? What’s the real practical value of the Pythagorean Theorem? Are there Sudoku puzzles with fewer than 17 entries and just one solution? Where and how do mathematicians work? Who invented proofs and why do we need them? Why is there no Nobel Prize for mathematics? What kind of life did Paul Erdős lead? Find out the answers to these and other questions in this entertaining book of stories. You’ll see that everyone counts, but no computation is needed.

What is new in the book? Apart from its format, in brief, it has thought-provoking angles of observation and deductive conclusions on many topics, which may look ordinary or rare. Who will benefit from the book? Any lay person with an historical bent of mind on mathematical topics stands to gain from it. Both undergraduate and graduate students in history of mathematics courses would enjoy it. All reflections are independent—they are excellent bedtime reading too.