Take Home Task 1, December 3rd, 2014 History of Mathematics Education PMI 2011 Ilham Rizkianto (ilham_rizkianto@uny.ac.id)
Discuss these problems with your group. Write down your result in a word document named HME.THT1.(your group name) and send it to me by Wednesday, December 10th.
Please remember that you are the ones who really need to know the solution of each problem below.
1. Describe the type of evidence on which an account of prehistoric mathematics is based, cite some specific instances.
2. What evidence, if any, is there that mathematics began with the advent of man? Do you think that mathematics antedates man?
3. List evidences from language for the use at some time of bases other than ten.
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the bases two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, and sixty? Do you think that these influenced early man in his choice of a base?
5. If you had to choose a number base, which would it be? Why?
6. Which do you think came first, number names or number symbols? Why? 7. Why are there few traces of scales from six to nine?
8. What do you think were the first plane and solid geometric figures to be consciously and systematically studied? Why?
9. Which do you think was more influential in the rise of early geometry, an interest in astronomy or a need for surveying? Explain.
