Marcia Ascher showed me a series of elusive but
beautiful findings of the Marchall Island maps. In the article Models and Maps
from the Marshall Island: A Case in Ethnomathematics, the author demonstrated
the mathematical thoughts in Marchall Island sailing tools. Local Marchall
residents use mattings, rebbelith, and meddo to save secrets of their
geological knowledge and to train their navigators.
Frankly, I found the matting part difficult to
understand. The Marchall mattings are usually symmetric, and contain lots of
triangles, sectors, angles, arcs, etc.. Local people use them to position in
the ocean. However, even though I know that the arcs and swells are somehow
similar to the shapes of waves in the Marchall sea area, I am still REALLY
confused about how the tools work. The other two tools are somehow easy to
understand: local Marchall people use intersects to identify islands so that
whenever they see two islands, they can locate all the other islands.
I think this article is a good example of showing
ethnomathematics, as it is difficult for me to understand the explanations in an
off-background situation. I can understand every individual word; but when
relating them together, I just lose my mind. I guess this is how Marchall
people keep their secrets……..
I have never heard of Marchall people before, so I just looked them up on Google. Their culture seems to be one that is prospering decently well, but is still undeveloped (this might be totally inaccurate...???). The reason I bring this up is because after reading my article and the comments from everyone else on their articles for this week, it seems as if all of these articles are situated in settings of underdeveloped countries. The articles showed how math was used in daily life for sailors with the Marchall people, local African people, and children in the market in Brazil. I wonder if there are articles on using math in everyday life in developed countries. I think it would be interesting to hear more about this in class on Wednesday.
回复删除I too believe that ethnomathematics has very much to do with "useful" mathematics. Like what Keri mentioned in her response that in our daily lives we encounter a plethora of mathematics yet they do not seem like a chore to us. I have a feeling that understanding how the tools work is not the main point of the article. Rather, the complexity of the mathematics used by the Marchall people at sea is what should impress us (the mathematics educators). Often the subject, Mathematics, is put on the pedestal as if it is somehow a measure for intelligence when in reality it is a long list of steps and algorithms that have little meaning to the students. There is so much math (with high complexity) around us; how can we make math more meaningful and relatable to our students?
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