[Maths-Education] Colour edition "African Pythagoras"

[Peter Gates]

From: Paulus Gerdes [mailto:paulus.gerdes at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 5:03 PM
To: gzhu at bjtu.edu.cn
Cc: ggreenfi at richmond.edu; Nguerekata at aol.com; Peter.Gates at nottingham.ac.uk; gert.schubring at uni-bielefeld.de; Ggilme at aol.com; ghanna at oise.on.ca; K.Glevey at ioe.ac.uk; goduk1in at cmich.edu; Greta.VanKeymeulen at arteveldehs.be; j.vangroenendael at science.ru.nl; j.j.gray at open.ac.uk; mgray at american.edu; vmasanja at gmail.com; gsarhangi at towson.edu; guy.brousseau at wanadoo.fr; ribasg71 at gmail.com; darvasg at iif.hu; darvasg at helka.iif.hu
Subject: Colour edition "African Pythagoras"

Please forward to those who may be interested:

Dear friends and colleagues,

I have the pleasure to announce the publication of the first colour edition of my book "AFRICAN PYTHAGORAS: A Study in Culture and Mathematics Education"
(ISBN 978-1-257-16100-3, 124 pp., available as printed book and as download from: http://stores.lulu.com/pgerdes)

"AFRICAN PYTHAGORAS: A study in culture and mathematics education" shows how diverse African ornaments and artefacts may be used to create an attractive context for the discovery and the demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem and of related ideas and propositions.

The first black-and-white edition of "African Pythagoras" was published in 1992 in Portuguese, and in 1994 in English.  Some parts of the book were reproduced in Chapter 2 'From African designs to discovering the Pythagorean Theorem' (pp. 54-86) of the author's book "Geometry from Africa: Mathematical and Educational Explorations" (Mathematical Association of America, Washington DC, 1999) ('Outstanding Academic Book,' Choice Magazine, 2000).

The 2011 edition of "African Pythagoras" is the first colour edition and contains as afterword a review by Jens Hoyrup (Roskilde University, Denmark).

>From the afterword:
"Teachers and textbook authors will ... find substance and an abundance of ideas for the introduction of many essential aspects of geometrical reasoning, not least geometrical reasoning about real-world phenomena.  There is no reason that only African teachers should draw on this inspiration, ... [as] sub-Saharan African geometrical art ... possesses a universal value of which the mathematics education of the global village should take advantage."

Keywords:

Africa, African culture, African art, Pythagoras, Pythagorean Theorem, Pappus, geometry, proof, heuristics, magic squares, Latin squares, trigonometry, fractals, mathematics, mathematics education, mathematics teacher education, ethnomathematics, ethnogeometry

Best regards,

Paulus Gerdes

March 27, 2011


--
Paulus Gerdes
Vice-President for Southern Africa, African Academy of Sciences
Chairman, AMU Commission for the History of Mathematics in Africa
President, International Studygroup for Ethnomathematics
C.P. 915, Maputo, Moçambique
paulus.gerdes at gmail.com<mailto:paulus.gerdes at gmail.com>
http://stores.lulu.com/pgerdes