Historical Figures in 1 Minute
1. At your table, choose one person (someone who can write quickly).
When I say START, you will be given 1 minute to come up with the names of as many important historical figures as you can think of. They can be from any time period, any country and any profession. See how many you can come up with.
2. START
3. After 1 minute, FREEZE. Add them up.
4. Record how many each table got. #’s 1 – 11 on board.
For the following, you may want to assign A, B, C and have random people solve the following, or do it as a whole group:
5. Add up how many the entire group got.
6. Looking at your list, what is the ratio of women to men?
7. What is that as a percentage?
8. What continent was this person’s place of origin?
Name the continents: NA, SA, CA?, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and Oceania, Antarctica.
Name the percentage of each. What is your highest representation?
9. Categorize your list by profession. Approximately what
percent for each profession is represented?
10. Categorize by year born. What percent are born in this century? 1900 – 2007 1800 – 1900 Pre 1800
9:50 – 10:30The Chain Game
- Debrief with questions.
- Show extensions by last year’s TC’s
- World on Fire
10:30 – 10:45 BREAK
10:45 – 11:15Introduce the Math Equity Assignment
- Go through the assignment using overhead or LCD.
-you will teach it at least once, better if you can do it twice.
-Presentation ideas: short film of your experience
-Neil Tinker will do a session in lab if we want.
-When?
Give examples for each:
• Exploring the names of Scarborough schools – who
is represented?
• Exploring books in the school library - who
is represented?
• If the world were a village
• Basket full of Bangles – story of Muhammed Yunis who won Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, 12 December 2006. Bring books/show interview
• mathematicians who used math to change the world:
Florence Nightingale*
• Large numbers
11:15 – noonPlanning Sessions
In school groups, begin to think about what project you will be teaching…what grade level, etc.
Today, Florence Nightingale draws a graph. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
In 1853, Turkey declared war on Russia. After the Russian Navy destroyed a Turkish squadron in the Black Sea, Great Britain and France joined with Turkey. In September of the following year, the British landed on the Crimean Peninsula and set out, with the French and Turks, to take the Russian naval base at Sevastopol.
What followed was a tragicomedy of errors -- failure of supply, failed communications, international rivalries. Conditions in the armies were terrible, and disease ate through their ranks. They finally did take Sevastopol a year later, after a ghastly assault. It was ugly business all around. Well over half a million soldiers lost their lives during the Crimean War.
One true hero emerges from all that. Florence Nightingale had few of the warm and fuzzy edges that surround her image. She was a tough, tireless, and fiercely intelligent organizer, who fought all her life to create humane care for the sick and wounded.
In 1858, Nightingale wrote her Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army. In it, she created a remarkable and original graphical display to show us just what'd really gone on in the War. It was a Polar-Area Diagram that showed how people had died during the period from July, 1854, through the end of the following year. The graph is a lesson to any engineer in how to present data -- not only so that it's clear to any reader, but to reveal the big picture as well.
Nightingale's graph is like a pie chart, cut into twelve equal angles. These slices advance in a clockwise direction. Each shows what happened in one month of one year. The outward reach of each slice shows how many deaths occurred in that month. We see little short slices in April, May and June of 1854. After the troops land in the Crimea, the slices begin reaching far outward in the radial direction.
There's more: Each slice has three sections, one for deaths from wounds in battle, one for "other causes", and one for disease. Except for the bloodiest month in the siege of Sevastopol, battle deaths take up a very small portion of each slice. Even the awful Charge of the Light Brigade yielded only a modest fraction of the total deaths in that month.
Once you see Nightingale's graph, the terrible picture is clear. The Russians were a minor enemy. The real enemies were cholera, typhus, and dysentery. Once the military looked at that eloquent graph, the modern army hospital system was inevitable.
You and I are shown graphs every day. Some are honest; many are misleading. Nightingale could, for example, have scaled deaths according to the radius, instead of the area, of the segments. That would've strengthened her case. But it would've misled people, since area is what the eye sees.
So you and I could use a Florence Nightingale today, as we drown in more undifferentiated data than anyone could've imagined during the Crimean War.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.
Example of a polar-area diagram invented by Florence Nightingale. The original was in color with the outer area in blue, the central darker areas in black, and the central lighter areas in red. The text in the lower left corner reads:
The Areas of the blue, red, & black wedges are each measured from the centre as the common vertex.
The blue wedges measured from the centre of the circle represent area for area the deaths from Preventable or Mitigable Zymotic diseases, the red wedges measured from the centre the deaths from wounds, & the black wedges measured from the centre the deaths from all other causes.
The black line across the red triangle in Nov. 1854 marks the boundary of the deaths from all other causes during the month.
In October 1854, & April 1855, the black area coincides with the red, in January & February 1855, the blue coincides with the black.
The entire areas may be compared byh following the blue, the red, & the black lines enclosing them.
Source: Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, 1858.
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The End of Poverty: An Interview with Muhammad Yunus
On his return to newly independent Bangladesh, Professor Muhammad Yunus creates a bank that serves the poorest of the poor.
Date Posted on Global Envision: August 28, 2003
Whether it’s the "end of welfare as we know it" or the shakeup at the World Bank, there is widespread re-thinking how we’ve been addressing poverty. Among the most successful innovations is the Grameen Bank, founded by Muhammad Yunus some 20 years ago – it is now the largest rural bank in Bangladesh and a model worldwide for its innovative micro-credit program. The bank lends money to the poorest people of Bangladesh, 94 percent of whom are women. Borrowers, who own over 90 percent of the shares of Grameen, meet in groups where they provide each other with encouragement, advice, and support. The model has inspired the development of micro-credit projects in over 50 countries, and a Micro-Credit Summit has been scheduled for early February with the goal of
reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest people by 2005.
Sarah van Gelder talks with Muhammad Yunus about the prospects for ending poverty worldwide.
Sarah: What was it that inspired you to begin a micro-credit program, and when did you realize that you were on to an important concept?
Yunus: I had been teaching in the United States and I returned to Bangladesh after independence to participate in rebuilding the nation. I came with the arrogance of a PhD; I thought we could solve the problems of Bangladesh. Once I was there, I was confronted with a nationwide famine and the arrogance melted away. I felt humbled; I couldn’t do anything.
Then I decided that, rather than worrying about what happens to the whole world, or Bangladesh, or the famine situation, I would just find out what I could do to help one person have a better day.
I started going to people’s houses, talking to them, trying to understand their life. I saw how people suffered for lack of a tiny amount of money. One dollar, two dollars can make so much difference in a life. We made a list of 42 people who needed a total of only $27, less than one dollar apiece. That was the biggest shock. How can people suffer for want of such small sums of money? The government was allocating millions of dollars, yet nobody cared how people suffered for such a tiny amount.
My first response was to loan them money from my own pocket Then I thought once I started, I would have to keep on lending my money. I should arrange with the bank to make the loans.
I approached a bank, but the bank manager said, "No, no, no. You cannot lend money to poor people. They will not pay you back."
I said, "How do you know? Have you ever tried?"
Whether it’s the "end of welfare as we know it" or the shakeup at the World Bank, there is widespread re-thinking how we’ve been addressing poverty.They said, "No, we don’t have to. We know they don’t."
I said, "We’ll find out. I think they will pay it back."
It’s a long story, but in the end I offered the bank my services as a guarantor. I borrowed the money from the bank, loaned it to the poor, and people paid it back.
But the bankers still said, "Oh, you’re a fool. They will repay the money this time, but the moment you loan more, they’ll stop." I was told that the loanswere repaid because the borrowers were all from one village where I had been meeting and talking with the people. So I did it in two villages, then five, 10, 20 villages, 30 villages, 100 villages. Each time it worked. Each time the bankers waited for the whole thing to collapse, and it did not. It grew.
Finally I decided to set up my own bank. The government thought it was a funny idea; poor people cannot borrow money. I showed them the examples, the reports, but they didn’t pay any attention. I lobbied, knocking on doors for two years. Finally, I was given permission, and we became a bank.
Sarah: From what I understand, the work you’re doing leads to changes in people’s lives that go beyond their immediate economic well-being. These are changes that enhance people’s capacity, strengthen community, affect their relationships, outlook on life, and perhaps even their spiritual experience. Can you talk a little bit about the changes you see?
Yunus: This work is not just about loaning money, paying it back, and hoping that things will change. We also engage the people who borrow from us in discussions about the social problems that they face in their lives and the kind of solutions they imagine for themselves.
Something we call "The 16 Decisions" emerged out of thousands and thousands of these sessions. For example, one of the 16 Decisions says, "We shall grow vegetables all year round, eat plenty of them, and sell the surplus." This decision helps to overcome malnutrition; a lot of children have night blindness due to vitamin A deficiency. Another one is, "We shall send our children to school so that they can become educated."
An especially important one is "We shall not take any dowry at the time of marriage of our sons, and we shall not give any dowry at the time of marriage of our daughters." A dowry is a curse; it destroys family after family who have to find the money to arrange the marriage of a daughter. As a result, a daughter becomes a family liability. The moment she is born, the family looks upon the daughter as a kind of punishment. Throughout her life the daughter lives in a very apologetic way. "Sorry I was born to be a daughter. I wish I was not born."
The only way to resolve this is for people to start thinking differently, to agree not to take dowries, and not to give them.
"This work is not just about loaning money and hoping that things will change. We also engage the people who borrow from us in discussions about the social problems they face and the kind of solutions they imagine for themselves."
Another one of the 16 Decisions is "We shall keep our families small, increase our income, and reduce our expenditures." Studies show that Grameen families adopt family planning practices at twice the rate of the national average.
Sarah: What other ways have you seen changes in society growing out of the Grameen process?
Yunus: We had a national election in June. We had a tremendous voter turnout, 73 percent average nationwide. The fascinating thing was that for the first time in the history of Bangladesh, women voters turned out in larger numbers than male voters. One common explanation is that more women voted because organizations such as Grameen and other micro-credit groups have organized them. Women are attending weekly meetings and developing leadership and greater awareness. When the election came, women wanted to be sure their voices were heard.
In the process, the fundamentalist party, which had 17 seats in the previous Parliament, was completely wiped out. They won only three seats, because the women don’t vote for them. The message was very clear – they were defeated everywhere.
These are the things that generate power and change consciousness. One thing leads to another. With money and empowerment, people start seeing themselves as people who can make decisions.
Sarah: I understand that Grameen has moved into other areas beyond micro-lending. Could you tell me a little bit about that, and why you’ve chosen to do so?
Yunus: We have observed that while Grameen credit helps people increase their income, several leakages in the system keep people from moving ahead. One is the expenditures for health care; as income rises, the expenditure for health care increases disproportionately. When you’re extremely poor, you don’t spend any money on your health because you are preoccupied with getting food. Once you satisfy that basic need, you start diverting your additional income to health issues, and you can’t move ahead. So, we decided that Grameen should look into Bangladesh health care.
In Bangladesh, child mortality is extremely high, one of the highest in the world. Maternal death at delivery is also very high. There is no prenatal examination or postnatal treatment of the mother.
The government organizes health services in Bangladesh, but does so very poorly. We decided to develop a modern, self-financing health care program that addresses the issues of the poor, emphasizes prevention, and is also very affordable.
For the last three years we have been operating an experimental Grameen health program at ten different sites. Our plan was that the village borrowers would contribute to the program and help set it up. We found that for about two dollars a year per family, we could develop a very good health care program with modern facilities for an entire area. Currently, we can cover 65 percent of the cost. We are trying to get to the point where we recover 100 percent of our costs so that we can expand the program throughout the country.
Sarah: Why were you able to do this when the government seemed to have such difficulty providing the services?
Yunus: Somehow, whenever the government is involved, corruption becomes an issue. The Bangladesh government spends a lot of money on health care, but the program is doctor-oriented. There are beautiful hospitals, clinics, and so forth, but people don’t get health services. Doctors have a private practice somewhere else, and come back at the end of the month to pick up the check. The government cannot change because people in the programs are so powerful.