History of Mathematics in and for the Curriculum

History of Mathematics in and for the Curriculum

1. Websites

British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) exists to promote research into the history of mathematics and its use at all levels of mathematics education.

The Society's Bulletin is published by Taylor and Francis, and carries a wide range of articles and reviews of interest to the history of mathematics and mathematics education communities.

This link provides information about how to join the Society; this site also contains information about the Society and its history, its current activities, and various resources on the history of mathematics.

http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/

There is now a BSHM Education site:

http://www.bshmeducation.org/education.html

MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/

The most reliable source for biographies and discoveries of mathematicians, accounts of civilisations and cultural aspects, particular topics and many other items.

Mathematical Sciences Digital Library (MathDL) is sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America.

http://convergence.mathdl.org/jsp/index.jsp

It has an on-line publication called LOCI with a subsection called CONVERGENCE a collection of resources for teaching mathematics using its history.

http://convergence.mathdl.org/mathDL/23/

Biographies of Women Mathematicians can be found at:

http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm

For Mathematicians of the 17th and 18th Centuries go to:

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/RBallHist.html

The History of Mathematical Words, Symbols and Notation

http://jeff560.tripod.com/mathword.html

and

http://jeff560.tripod.com/mathsym.html

Here there are links to images of mathematicians on postage stamps and words that are ambiguously defined in school books.

NRICH

These articles are mostly for KS3, KS4, KS5 and some A Level.

Leo Rogers’ history ‘episodes’.

I have added what I am calling ‘Pedagogical Notes’ to each of these.

From a Random World to Rational Universe

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6120

Randomness and Brownian Motion

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6127

History of Time Measurement

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6070

History of Negative Numbers

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5961

Proof - Brief Historical Survry

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5996

The Four Colour Theorem

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6291

Geometry from Practice to Abstraction

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6352

A History of Algebra - Part 1 Visualisation

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6485

Some selected topics by other people:

The Ishango Bone

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6013

Understanding Hypotheses

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6178

Women in Maths

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5748

Negative Numbers

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5747

The Victorian Classroom

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=5892

History of Astronomy

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=2567

History of Time and Measurement

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6070&part=notes

Babylonian Numbers

http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=6001

If you go to the ‘Search NRICH’ box at the top of the main page and put in ‘History’ you will find a wide range of topics and articles all classified by Key Stage.

MOTIVATE

This is the Video Conference site for schools set up by the Millennium Mathematics project and run by Cambridge University.

http://motivate.maths.org/

Click on ‘Mathematics’ under Conference Programmes to find the list of video conferences and you will find Babylonian Mathematics (for 11-13 yr olds) at:

http://motivate.maths.org/conferences/conference.php?conf_id=175

Eleanor Robson is one of the world’s foremost experts in Babylonian Mathematics and a member of BSHM.

Here you can download Eleanor Robson’s PowerPoint presentation, copies of the project work and pages on numbers and fractions. (and for 8 - 10 yr olds) at:

http://motivate.maths.org/conferences/conference.php?conf_id=153

Maths is Good for You

This site is run by Snezana Lawrence at Simon Langton School in Canterbury.

http://www.mathsisgoodforyou.com/

This site is growing and has a number of good ideas and historical materials for use in schools.

Revised June 2009