Ethnomathematics
In mathematics education, ethnomathematics is the study of the relationship between mathematics and culture. Often associated with "cultures without written expression", it may also be defined as "the mathematics which is practised among identifiable cultural groups". It refers to a broad cluster of ideas ranging from distinct numerical and mathematical systems to multicultural mathematics education. The goal of ethnomathematics is to contribute both to the understanding of culture and the understanding of mathematics, and mainly to lead to an appreciation of the connections between the two. The development and meaning of "ethnomathematics" The term "ethnomathematics" was introduced by the Brazilian educator and mathematician Ubiratan D'Ambrosio in 1977 during a presentation for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Since D'Ambrosio put forth the term, people - D'Ambrosio included - have struggled with its meaning ("An etymological abuse leads me to use the words, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marcia Ascher
Marcia Alper Ascher (April 23, 1935 – August 10, 2013) was an American mathematician, and a leader and pioneer in ethnomathematics. She was a professor emerita of mathematics at Ithaca College. Life Ascher was born in New York City, the daughter of a glazier and a secretary. She graduated from Queens College, City University of New York in 1956, and married Robert Ascher, an anthropologist graduating from Queens College in the same year. They both became graduate students at the University of California, Los Angeles; she completed a master's degree in 1960, and moved with her husband to Ithaca, New York, where he had found a faculty position at Cornell University. She joined the mathematics department at Ithaca college in 1960, as one of the founders of the department. She retired as full professor emerita in 1995. She died on August 10, 2013. Books With her husband, Ascher co-authored the book ''Code of the Quipu, Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics, and Culture' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Finger-counting
Finger-counting, also known as dactylonomy, is the act of counting using one's fingers. There are multiple different systems used across time and between cultures, though many of these have seen a decline in use because of the spread of Arabic numerals. Finger-counting can serve as a form of manual communication, particularly in marketplace trading – including hand signaling during open outcry in floor trading – and also in games such as morra. Finger-counting is known to go back to ancient Egypt at least, and probably even further back.Georges Ifrah notes that humans learned to count on their hands. Ifrah shows, for example, a picture of Boethius (who lived 480–524 or 525) reckoning on his fingers in . notes that as early as the 3rd millennium BCE, in Egypt's Old Kingdom, in the Pyramid texts' "Spell for obtaining a ferry-boat", the ferryman might object "Did you bring me a man who cannot number his fingers?". This spell was needed to cross a canal of the nether-world, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mathematics Education
In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although research into mathematics education is primarily concerned with the tools, methods and approaches that facilitate practice or the study of practice, it also covers an extensive field of study encompassing a variety of different concepts, theories and methods. National and international organisations regularly hold conferences and publish literature in order to improve mathematics education. History Ancient Elementary mathematics were a core part of education in many ancient civilisations, including ancient Egypt, ancient Babylonia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Vedic India. In most cases, formal education was only available to male children with sufficiently high status, wealth or caste. The oldest known mathematics textbook is the Rh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Sinaitic script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is considered to be the first alphabet and is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and possibly Brahmic. It was created by Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in the Sinai Peninsula (as the Proto-Sinaitic script), by selecting a small number of hieroglyphs commonly seen in their Egyptian surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of the Canaanite languages. However, Peter T. Daniels distinguishes an abugida, a set of graphemes that represent consonantal base ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nursery Rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From the mid-16th century nursery rhymes begin to be recorded in English plays, and most popular rhymes date from the 17th and 18th centuries. The first English collections, ''Tommy Thumb's Song Book'' and a sequel, ''Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book'', were published by Mary Cooper (publisher), Mary Cooper in 1744. Publisher John Newbery's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, ''Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets for the Cradle'' (London, 1780). History Lullabies The oldest children's songs of which we have records are Lullaby, lullabies, intended to help a child fall asleep. Lullabies can be found in every human culture. The English term lullaby i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dutch Language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. ''Afrikaans'' is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible daughter languageAfrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , . Afrikaans was historically called Cape Dutch; see , , , , , . Afrikaans is rooted in 17th-century dialects of Dutch; see , , , . Afrikaans is variously described as a creole, a partially creolised language, or a deviant variety of Dutch; see . spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, evolving from the Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa. The dialects used in Belgium (including Flemish) and in Suriname, meanwhile, are all guided by the Dutch Language Union. In Europe, most of the population of the Netherlands (where it is the only official language spoken country ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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German Language
German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italy, Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg and German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium, as well as a national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France (Bas-Rhin), Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Poland (Upper Silesia), Slovakia (Bratislava Region), and Hungary (Sopron). German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch language, Dutch, English language, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots language, Scots, and Yiddish. It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic languages, North Germanic group, such as Danish lan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Billion
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This number, which is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, is now referred to in English as one trillion. However, this number is the historical meaning in English for the word "billion" (with the exception of the United States), a meaning was still in official use in British English until some time after World War II. American English adopted the short scale definition from the French (it enjoyed usage in France at the time, alongside the long-scale definition). The United Kingdom used the long scale billion until 1974, when the government officially switched to the short scale, but since the 1950s the short scale had already been incre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Million
One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian ''millione'' (''milione'' in modern Italian), from ''mille'', "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix ''-one''. It is commonly abbreviated in British English as m (not to be confused with the metric prefix "m", ''milli'', for ), M, MM ("thousand thousands", from Latin "Mille"; not to be confused with the Roman numeral = 2,000), mm (not to be confused with millimetre), or mn in financial contexts. In scientific notation, it is written as or 106. Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix mega (M), when dealing with SI units; for example, 1 megawatt (1 MW) equals 1,000,000 watts. The meaning of the word "million" is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems. The million is sometimes used in the English ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dozen
A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve. The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive integer groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the Moon, or months, in a cycle of the Sun, or year. Twelve is convenient because it has a maximal number of divisors among the numbers up to its double, a property only true of 1, 2, 6, 12, 60, 360, and 2520. The use of twelve as a base number, known as the duodecimal system (also as ''dozenal''), originated in Mesopotamia (see also sexagesimal). Counting in base-12 can easily be accomplished on one's hands by counting each finger bone with one's thumb. Using this method, one hand can count to twelve, and two hands (with the second hand as a placeholder for representing units of twelve) can count to 144. Twelve dozen (122 = 144) are known as a gross; and twelve gross (123 = 1,728, the duodecimal 1,000) are called a great gross, a term most often used when shipping or buying items in bul ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Score (number)
Score or scorer may refer to: *Test score, the result of an exam or test Business * Score Digital, now part of Bauer Radio#Score Digital, Bauer Radio * Score Entertainment, a former American trading card design and manufacturing company * Score Media, a former Canadian media company Mathematics *Score (statistics), a quantity in statistics *Score (number), a quantity of twenty units *Raw score, an original datum that has not been transformed *Score test, a statistical test *Scorer's function, solutions to differential equations *Scoring rule, measuring the accuracy of probabilistic predictions *Standard score, a quantity derived from the raw score * Score, a Unit_of_time, period of 20 years Science and technology *Single colour reflectometry (SCORE), an optical technique for monitoring biomolecular interactions Arts, entertainment, and media *Event score, written or printed instructions for a visual art performance Films * Score (1974 film), ''Score'' (1974 film), an America ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thousand
1000 or one thousand is the natural number following 999 and preceding 1001. In most English-speaking countries, it can be written with or without a comma or sometimes a period separating the thousands digit: 1,000. A group of one thousand things is sometimes known, from Ancient Greek, as a chiliad. A period of one thousand years may be known as a chiliad or, more often from Latin, as a millennium. The number 1000 is also sometimes described as a short thousand in medieval contexts where it is necessary to distinguish the Germanic concept of 1200 as a long thousand. Notation * The decimal representation for one thousand is ** 1000—a one followed by three zeros, in the general notation ; ** 1 × 103—in engineering notation, which for this number coincides with : ** 1 × 103 exactly—in scientific normalized exponential notation ; ** 1 E+3 exactly—in scientific E notation. * The SI prefix for a thousand units is "kilo-", abbreviated to "k"—for instance, a kilog ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |