The Roots of the Equation

How to Order the Topics

Not much posting recently, but hey, it’s summer. I’ve mostly done vacationing, now, and am really thinking about the new year.

I just finished reading through the first half of Merzbach’s and Boyer’s A History of Mathematics, up until the Renaissance. I took a list of topics associated with different cultures as I read through, as they may lead to some interesting lessons in the upcoming school year. I’m not really sure of the best way to integrate with the Global curriculum, but the 9th Grade Team is meeting tomorrow and I’m hoping I can talk with the history teacher about it. Obviously an ordering by mathematical sense won’t match a chronological historical ordering, or even a topical historical ordering, but I’m sure something will come out of it.

At least, I feel that, if one had to come first, it is better to have the historical context before the math, than vice versa. Here’s the list I made, though there’s not much to it.