Math & You

Art and Mathematics. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem. Aspiring to be an architect, Escher enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. (Excerpt taken from NGA.)

French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.

Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy, but contributed the following:

• Graph (x-y coordinate plane) - Cartesian coordinate plane

• Theory of knowledge (epistemology) - led to ideas of reality and movies, like the Matrix

• Combining algebra and geometry

• Rationalism - idea of philosophy that believes that reason, not senses, will lead to higher truths

Seeking out the logic and rules behind everything is a practice that is central to mathematics.

English astronomer, philosopher, physicist, and theologian.

Newton wrote Principia, which has been called the foundation of modern science. Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were credited for inventing calculus.

Calculus applies to physics, engineering, economics, statistics, and medicine. Even more:

• Physical concepts: motion, electricity, heat, light, harmonics, acoustics, astronomy, and dynamics, electromagnetism

• Chemistry: reaction rates and radioactive decay

• Biology: birth and death rates

• Economics: marginal cost and marginal revenue for predicting maximum profit

Brazilian educator and philosopher.

Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He defined two types of education paraphrased below:

Banking education:

• Students don't know anything; teachers know everything

• Students shouldn't talk nor question anything

• Students are empty vessels to be filled with knowledge

Problem-posing education:

• Students and teachers learning from one another

• True understanding comes from conversations and questioning

I hope you feel that our classroom practices the latter form of education!

Resident of Apple Valley

After 22 years of service he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, Command Pilot, with 480 hours of combat time, 3000 hours in the F-4, and 3600 hours total military flying time. His military awards include 4 Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Purple Heart, the Prisoner of War Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and 16 Air Medals. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics, and a Masters Degree in Business Management.

Tony served as a substitute teacher for ten years and currently volunteers as a mentor at the Academy for Academic Excellence in Apple Valley, Millionaire Mind Kids in Victorville, Tomorrow’s Aeronautical Museum in Compton, and is President of the California Chapter of Shades of Blue. He is a member of the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) and a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. (TAI).

Above biography taken directly from: https://www.obap.org/tony-marshall

Arab astronomer.

He wrote Al-Jabr w' al muqabola, which means "restoring" or "balancing" (equations). This book gave us the world "Algebra".

"After the fall of Egypt, came the rise of Arab civilization centered in Baghdad. Scholars from Constantinople and India were invited to study and to share their knowledge. It was through these contacts that the Arabs came to acquire the learning of the ancients."

Marsden, Jerrold & Marsden, Anthony. Vector Calculus. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2003. Print.

The Aztecs lived in Central Mexico. They used perimeter and area to determine areas of lands. Arrow, hand, and heart symbols were used to represent fractional distances. A line represented "1" and a dot represented "20", which is called a base-20 number system.

Of course, one can look at the pyramids of Egypt as an example African math, which to this day are a mathematical feat we still revere. However, there are more ancient African mathematical contributions. Check them out at this website: http://www.taneter.org/math.html.

Also, you can find recent African-American mathematicians at the following website: https://mashupmath.com/blog/famous-african-american-mathematicians.

Polynesians may have invented binary math, which is the basis of computer programming.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/12/polynesians-may-have-invented-binary-math

https://www.nature.com/news/polynesian-people-used-binary-numbers-600-years-ago-1.14380

The work of several generations of Chinese scholars were combined to make The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Arts.

Indian mathematics contained the first instance of the decimal number system.

Math facts about the Taj Mahal: https://www.slideshare.net/Amitbatra323/taj-mahals-mathematical-review

Paul Dirac, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and creator of modern quantum mechanics

"It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better."
Quote from the May 1963 issue of Scientific American

African American mathematician and physicist.

She worked for NASA and calculated trajectories and launch windows. The movie Hidden Figures shows how she became known as a "human calculator". President Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.