Reflection on the class

If you had asked me a year ago about teaching math history in as part of the high school curriculum, I probably would have said it was a waste of time. Of course, back then, I knew very little about math history. But throughout the course I've really developed an appreciation for the ways in which it can be used as an educational tool, and for the inherent wonder of the human race's progression in their understanding of this beautiful subject.

Giving historical context to a math topic can change a unit from being a dry and unmotivated set of procedures for solving problems students don't care about to the study of the solutions of historic problems in ways students would never have expected. For example, I hope to talk a bit about Turing and the way he decryped the Enigma cypher as an introduction to my combinatorics unit on practicum. I hope that my students will care a little more if they realize that what they're learning can be used to defeat Nazis.

I also learned a lot of mathematical history - I had no idea that Arabian math around from around 500-1000 CE was so advanced, or that the Maya had a sophisticated way of working with modular arithmetic. These gave me more of an appreciation for math as a truly global endeavour throughout history, and I would like to learn more about math from around the world so that I can incorporate it into my classes.

I would have liked to look a bit more in depth at some of the advanced mathematical techniques of historical civilizations - for example, Arabian mathematicians' solutions of quadratic and cubic equations or Chinese number theory. It seemed like we spent a lot of time looking at various number systems which, while interesting, got a little tiring after a while.