Homeschool Math Blog

I recently created a worksheet generator for Roman numerals . Feel free to use it. Roman numerals is not any major topic in the math curriculum. They are still used in clocks, to number chapters of a book, write year numbers, and such, so students need to study them, even if just briefly. Fortunately it isn't that difficult a topic. Many youngsters might, in fact, be interested in learning about different number systems that have been used in various civilizations over the centuries. I just posted about writing in math class , and this topic would make for an excellent writing project that connects math, writing, and history. Then you wouldn't be doing it just for the sake of learning the math, or the historical facts, but also to practice writing a report or an essay. It's probably the easiest to work into the curriculum if you're homeschooling, because classroom teachers may have to just kind of scurry by the Roman numerals on into the next topic. But even if you'...

This story is fascinating; they found a long-lost works of Archimedes under the text of a prayer book, and used modern technology to "see" under the prayer text. After the text was recovered, it was discovered that Archimedes actually found some of the principles of calculus , and used them to figure out volumes and areas. He dealt with "actual" and "potential" infinity, which is exactly what calculus is about. And he lived thousands of years before Newton! A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.

Enjoy: A Very Short History of Mathematics This is how it starts: MATHEMATICS is very much older than History, which begins* in +1066, as is well known; for the first mathematician of any note was a Greek named Zeno, who was born in -494, just 1,559 years earlier. Zeno is memorable for proving three theorems: (i) that motion is impossible; (ii) that Achilles can never catch the tortoise (he failed to notice that this follows from his first theorem); and (iii) that half the time may be equal to double the time. This was not considered a very good start by the other Greeks, so they turned their attention to Geometry. continue here... Hat Tip to Let's Play Math .

I just started reading the book Mathematics : The Science of Patterns by Keith Devlin. I'm planning on writing a review of it for my site. I can already tell it's a good book, and I've just read the prologue, titled "What is mathematics?" The author says that yes, mathematics WAS the study of number - up till about 500 B.C. Then it became the study of number and shape. After invention of calculus, it became the study of number, shape, motion, change and space. But nowadays you can't say that any more, because the field of mathematics has expanded SO much: in 1900 it would have taken about eighty books to write all the world's mathematical knowledge. Devlin estimates that nowadays (or when he wrote the book about 10 years ago) it would take maybe 100,000 volumes to contain all knonw mathematics! You know, your average person doesn't realize that. I got a glimpse of it while in university, when I saw all these lists of subcategories of mathematics, and...