Today I am presenting some of the ideas behind the Mathemafrica project to an Italian meeting, discussing the outcomes of the AIMS-imaginary meeting last month. The presentation can be found here:
Mathemafrica – Italian discussion
I write this before Mathemafrica publicly launches. I want to give a little background about myself, what I am doing now, and what I see as the potential for Mathemafrica.
I am originally from England, Oxford to be precise. From a very early age I was fascinated with the way the world worked, being that pestering, questioning child who won’t take ‘just because’ for an answer. I was very lucky to discover early on that not only were there fascinating questions to be asked, but answers when you knew the right places to look. I was lucky to have resources at my fingertips and museums just down the road where there were mysteries to be solved on every trip. My curiosity was not sated by reading books and so I went on to study physics at University. After four years and still hungry for more I thought that a PhD might finally put a stop to my questioning, but of course that only added to the arsenal of tools at my disposal for answering them.…
I am a mathematician, and I would like to stand on your roof.’ That is how Ron Eglash greeted many African families he met while researching the fractal patterns he’d noticed in villages across the continent.
Watch this TED Video by Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician, who studies the way math and cultures intersect. He has shown that many aspects of African design — in architecture, art, even hair braiding — are based on perfect fractal patterns.
Reference: TED web page.
This is the introduction which I give to my first year mathematics class when they see imaginary numbers for the first time. I thought I’d type it up here as it’s received good reactions the two times that I’ve introduced it in this format. Note that this probably isn’t the canonical way to introduce complex numbers, but then most of my lectures don’t necessarily take the normal route…
Complex Numbers, a philosophical detour
Before we get on to talking about imaginary numbers and complex numbers, let’s try and break down our preconceptions about numbers in general.
We look at the world around us and see many things which we categorise. We see a computer, a piece of paper, we see other people, we see our hands. These are labels that we use to categorise the world, but these objects seem very physical and very real. We rarely question their existence, though if one wants to take the Cartesian view, we should also question the reality we are in.…
