Thursday, November 16, 2023

Maya numerals

1. Consider the so-called Hardy-Ramanujan number 1729, and the story of Taxicab Numbers, retold on Wolfram Mathworld at the link above. Hardy is quoted as saying of Ramanujan that "each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends". What do you make of this in terms of Major's paper?

Ramanujan's story tied to the Hardy-Ramanujan number 1729 aligns well with Major's exploration of the personalities linked to numbers. His attachment to numbers, seeing each as a personal friend, resonates with Major's insights into Ordinal Linguistic Personification (OLP).

Major delves into how some people attribute human-like traits or personalities to numbers through OLP. Ramanujan's statement about integers as personal friends showcases a deep and intimate relationship with these numerical entities.


2. Is this something that you might want to introduce to your secondary math students? Why or why not? If you would use these ideas in your math class, how might you do so?

I think that personifying numbers is a pretty cool way to incorperate the First People's Principle of storytelling. Teaching exponents, for example, through personifying numbers can help students remember the rules and methods better. For example, I can tell my students that the "negative" 4 in the exponent is being very negative, grumpy, and sad, and ask them how we can make it positive and happy. They will answer my question by instructing me to bring it to the denominator.

3. Do numbers have particular personalities for you? Why, how, or why not? What about letters of the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, etc.?

I think as we learn mathematics, we innately label numbers with distinct personalities to help us remember content. The author calls this phenomenon OLP. For example, certain numbers are "nice" numbers and thus "happy" numbers as well. For example, any number that ends with a zero is a nice and happy number to me, most likely because they are nice numbers in the base 10 system. For letters, I guess common letters like vowels, s, t, etc. are nice and happy letters? Regarding other things like days of the week and months of the year, I often associate them with my mood. Obviously, Mondays are sad and depressing because it is often the first day back to school/work, and Fridays are all happy. For years, I love the summer so June and July are like happy months while January and Febuary are sad months.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Nathaniel, nice connection to the First Peoples' Principles ! I like that you are thinking about these ideas as they might relate to your teaching. Your reflection on letters is so interesting in terms of more common ones being the happy letters. Would you say letters have different moods, like months do?

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