I think if you're against this kind of thing you should actually explain what you think is bad about it, rather than leaving it to innuendo and scare quotes.
I think if you're against this kind of thing you should actually explain what you think is bad about it, rather than leaving it to innuendo and scare quotes.
To his credit PG does so here, but FWIW I don't think this objection is very serious--departments typically control what courses count towards the major! x.com/paulg/status/1…
To his credit PG does so here, but FWIW I don't think this objection is very serious--departments typically control what courses count towards the major! x.com/paulg/status/1…
Essentially every course along these lines gets attention from the Quillette-sphere and RW media, but it's not clear to me why. Should the number of courses on 'indigenous mathematics' offered annually worldwide be zero? I don't see why! Seems like an interesting enough subject.
Would I teach a course like this? Probably not, I don't know anything about indigenous mathematics. Would I find the material interesting? Sure, sounds fun to me. I took all sorts of electives in college!
Here is the title of one of the papers a student wrote as part of the assessment for this course: 'The comparative derivations of Maclaurin series of trigonometric functions in 17th–18th century Europe and Japan and 14th–16th century Kerala.' Sounds cool!
Anyway, if you're tempted to explain to me what math is in response to this thread, feel free to check out some of my papers first, so that you pitch your explanation appropriately.
@littmath Cool indeed. Is that what is called indigenous mathematics?
@littmath Do you have a link to this paper? I want to know now ... A colleague once said that one tradition in India developed an oral approach to mathematics in which it was felt important to be able to talk an audience through an argument without writing.
@littmath Does "indigenous" just mean "global south" now? How are Indians an "indigenous" people in this context? (They weren't even colonized by the British in the 14th-16th centuries!) The titling of the course seems a little provocative for something that just sounds like math history?
@littmath Nerding out by going down mathematical rabbit holes because it sounds cool is not what’s going on here. This isn’t a math problem it’s an agenda problem.