Mayans and Their Math

Hello! Today I am going to do a blog post about Mayans and their math. The last time I did a scribe post was when I was in the robotics group. I was blogging about what I learned and what I did, but this time I'm going to be blogging about what I have learned so far about the Mayans.

Did you know that ...

(I ran out of "math facts" so I added a little bit something about their culture)

- In the Maya counting system that there are only three symbols?

*What are the three symbols and what do they represent?

Click to see where I got this picture from

- The Mayan number system is approximately 1000 years and is more advanced than the European number system at the time

- Their system was set up so that the first five place values were based on the multiples of 20

- The Mayan's were the first to symbolize the concept of nothing (0)

- Mayan's independently came up with the symbol of zero

- Did you know that tourists are attracted to Cancun because of the Mayan civilization?

- Mayans had more than one god

- They believed that the Earth is going to end at December 21 2012

- Until now there are people who speak the Mayan language

-The Mayan culture extended to parts of what is now Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, and most of Guatemala and Belize

Here are some cool symbols I found on the internet:

(symbol for life)

click link to see where I got this picture from

Symbol for family

click link to see where I got this from

symbol for love

click link to see where I got this from

That's all the information I got that I thought people should know. Please correct me if I have any mistakes. Make a comment. The next scribe is... Shaine :D

Egyptian Mathematics Scribe Post

Oct.28, 2009

Hey Guys! For today, I am going to write about, what I've learned while researching Egyptian Mathematics. So, Here it goes.


I learned, that the Egyptian civilization were the first civilization to use the scientific arts. Although, they've had a lot of achievements, there are no proofs of how they reached their mathematical conclusions. Their decimal system contains 7 different symbols:

• 1 is shown by a single stroke
• 10 is shown by a drawing of a hobble for cattle
• 100 is presented by a coil of rope
• 1,000 is a drawing of a lotus plant
• 10,000 is presented by a finger
• 100,000 is presented by a tadpole or frog
• 1,000,000 is a figure of a god with arms raised above his head

Egyptians performed multiplying and dividing, by doubling and also halving. They introduced the earliest fully developed base 10 numeration system. The Egyptians used the Akhmim Wooden Tablet (AWT), which lists 5 divisions of a unit called a hekat. Two number systems were used in Ancient Egypt. One was written in hieroglyphs. The second number system was written as a digital system. It was a one-number-to-one-symbol system, and it was completely different from the hieroglyphic system.

Egyptian multiplication was done by repeated doubling of the number. The number 1, would have the multiplicand written next to it. Then, it was added to itself, and the number 2 would have the result written next to it. They would continue the process until the doublings gave a number greater than half of the multiplier. Then, they would repeatedly subtract the doubled numbers from the multiplier, to select which of the results of the existing calculations should be added together to create the answer.

For example:

As you can all see, Egyptian Mathematics is way different than the kind of math we use today. Well, that's all I have for u guys. I hope, that all of you have learned something from my post.

****I choose Eunice Cadao, to be the next scribe.****

Sribe Post for October 13, 2009

Hello today I will be talking to you about what we are doing in Enriched Math class.

The class, if you don't already know is divided into two groups. One group is learning how to build robotics and the other group is doing research to try and find out about math in there ancient civilization.

The group that I am in is the one where we do research, the civilization I have chosen to do my research on is the Indians.

Now I will tell you some facts about Indian Mathematics.

• Indian Mathematics emerged in South Asia from Ancient times until the end of the 18th Century
  
• During the Classical Period of Indian Mathematics, which was 400 AD to 1200 AD important contributions were mad by Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara the second.

Thank you for taking your time to reading my scribe and I hope you learned something about Indian Mathematics.

Please comment

Scribe Post for Last thursday

Eunice Cadao

9-02

Hello! I'm sorry I posted up my blog just today. This blog's for last Thursday. I'm going to be talking about what I learned in class last Thursday.

Our class is divided into two groups. The first group are the research people and the other group are the people who are learning how to build robots. I'm in the learning-how-to build a robot group. It's really fun.

I learned how to install and download things in the robot. First you have to follow instructions. Then finally you get to this point where it says: ROBOT EDUCATOR at the top. At the side you'll see a bunch of icons. My partner and I installed images, timer and sounds. To be able to do that you have to drag the icon onto this square outline, then if you want to install more drag another icon beside it. If you want to download sounds, there'll be a box at the bottom that shows you a bunch of choices like what you want your robot to say, e.g.: hello, goodbye, green and etc. You click the word you want then there's this rectangle box that will pop out, press play if you want to hear it but you have to download it first so you click the bottom left then you have to wait for it, the last thing you have to do is to make sure you've downloaded it is you have to click the center button of the robot it will play the sound you've downloaded. The instructions I gave applies to anything you want to download.

I apologize again that I only posted up my blog just now. Leave a comment if you're confused, bye! :)

Scribe post October 9 2009

In Enriched math today, we continued to work on our projects, and the robotics kids started building there robots.

Nothing new happened, and we spent the class working.

Lego Robotics scribe Oct 8th

Hi it's Trent and this is the first robotics post, I think? IN class we got to try out the NXT for the first time and make it TALK!!! It's cool that you can make it say anything like hello, goodbye or make sounds like beeping or applauding. It was cool our robot said "sorry goodbye!" That was it for the first class, it was mostly just figuring out how to work the NXT.

Scribe Post October 6th, 2009

Hey enriched math class of the year 2009-10, I am the first post for this thing.. Which is awesome! Well, today we started to research on the many different nationalities and their math systems such as the sumerians, babylonians, mayans, indians, chinese, ancient egyptians, and others.. That was only for one half of the people in the class. The other half started on their lego robotic kits and i think that they just started to get use to what they were working with. I don't know really because I am not in that lucky group. I don't know what else to put on this because today was pretty easy on the work. Thankyou for your time! :)

Assignment One

Here is the assignment notes for all the students who will be doing a presentation.
1. Choose a civilization from early times like: Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Mayans, Indians, Sumerians,Aztecs, ...
2. Create notes that will answer the folowing questions:
a. where or when was the math originally invented?
b. how did te civilization know their math was important?
c. what was the purpose of the math?
d. how were the numbers developed? What did they look like?
e. did they use any operations in their math?
f. did the math spread? Do we use it today?
g. which segment of the civilization used the numbers/math?
h. did theyhave laws of math? what might they have been?
i. what is the first evidence of math in the civilization?
j. if the civilization had not invented or used math, how would it have affected our civilization?

3. You will need to create a power point presentation that will include the following items:
A map of the area that the civilization flourished, a picture or diagram of any of the numbers that the civilization used, any other relevant pictures that you can think of, answer the questions above and any other questions you came across,be able to present your findings to the class.