If you had told me that maths was in art, I would have probably liked maths a lot more when I was a child. Maths can be seen everywhere in the world but I would never have thought that it was in art as well! To be honest, I would never have thought of the […] Continue reading →

Chocolate cutting trick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBsPgPu0Wc I recently watched this video which showed someone cutting up a bar of chocolate. Originally I questioned where the maths was in this, until I looked further into this. I watched this video several times and tried to work out how a bar of chocolate could be cut up, with a […] Continue reading →

Liping Ma (2010, p.111) states that “mathematics is not rigid.” Originally, I would have completely disagreed with this statement as I believed that mathematics wasn’t important and not needed in real life. I thought that after doing maths in school I would never use it ever again because it was pointless. However, I discovered mathematics […] Continue reading →

Recently, in our Discovering Maths module we were asked to come up with our own number system. This proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. How can you come up with another symbol rather than the numeral we are use to to represent a number?! Myself and my partner […] Continue reading →

After yesterday’s lecture on place value, I was left feeling some what baffled by the binary system as even though we tried hard to crack it at our table, it wasn’t until I watched a video explaining it that it all made sense. Studying number systems closely over the past couple of weeks has sparked […] Continue reading →

From the title, it would be understandable for you to think I had gone mad. In fact, quite the opposite. I had a wonderful lesson today exploring the joys of number systems and place value.  Although at first it was not as clear, it was exciting watching the numbers evolve and make sense in front […] Continue reading →

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, using digits or other symbols in a consistent manner. Here in the United Kingdom we use a simple base 10 system or decimal number system. In base 10, each digit in a position of a number can have an integer value ranging from 0 to […] Continue reading →

We recently had a workshop with Wendee which was all about learning about mathematics through play. It was great as it let us pretend that we were children again! Play has an extremely important part in a child’s development. It allows them to learn new skills, such as socialising with their peers. But, it also […] Continue reading →

(Islamic Tiles Pattern) Who knew maths could be so pretty and creative? Symmetry has to be the most significant and elegant connection between the boundaries of art, science and maths. These patterns create a visual language expressing order and generating appealing, fascinating compositions and it’s my favourite part of maths as it often surprises people! […] Continue reading →

(One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid’s Elements, dated to circa AD 100) Prehistoric Mathematics. Sounds boring, right? Wrong. Now I’m not one for history but after our workshop last week on the origin of number systems, I decided to look into the history of maths and number systems a bit more. If you […] Continue reading →

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of PUFM (profound understanding of mathematics) until my first workshop for the math’s elective. I couldn’t even tell you one of the principles let alone four. However, now that I have done reading into Liping Ma’s research, it all makes sense. PUFM is essential if we as teachers are […] Continue reading →

So far in this elective I have seen that maths is used in everything we do every single day. From looking at the clock when we wake up and how much flour we should put in that cake we really shouldn’t be having. But, in a recent workshop with Wendee we have seen that maths […] Continue reading →

Years ago, there were no numerals. No names to define amounts. This is because it simply wasn’t necessary until people began forming villages and such where numbers and numerals were needed as a means of comparison for trading. This in itself is difficult for us to imagine, growing up counting in an Arabic (sometimes known […] Continue reading →

Can animals count?! My initial reaction Richard’s question was – No, they can’t. That’s impossible!! However, after being told about Clever Hans, the horse that could count in 1891, I thought that maybe it was possible for animals to count! Clever Hans the horse was put in a show by his owner, William Von Osten, […] Continue reading →

It seems that many pet owners claim that their animal can count. This is not a new idea, it seems the idea of animals counting goes back centuries. In the late 1800’s Wilhelm Von Osten came forward with the proposal that his horse, later named ‘Clever Hans’ had the innate ability to count. When Osten […] Continue reading →

Piaget believed that children were born with no cognitive understanding of mathematics, or “numerosity” – the ability to understand small quantities (Marmasse, Bletsas and Marti 2000). However, more recent research has shown that children of just a few months old understand very small quantities, distinguishing between 2 and 3 items, but not between 4 and […] Continue reading →