beautiful equations

Today I watched the BBC 4 programme Beautiful Equations. I loved it. If slightly off centre for my research, it certainly asked the question can maths be beautiful? and gave scientists opinions on the answer, delving back as far as Isaac Newton and ending with Stephen Hawkins view today.

This programme was brilliant for me as it was made by an artist and art critic Matthew Collings, so was asked from a similar perspective to mine, whilst being answered, for the viewers benefit, in fantastically simple laymens terms. Hooray! I actually feel as if I understand a bit about maths, and am a little clearer about where I am headed with my research. 

The conclusion of this programme is that equations are "masterpieces that explain the universe we live in".  It would seem that several of the scientists featured in this programme used the idea of mathematical beauty to guide their work. Both Dirac and Einstein believed that the laws that governed the universe would have an elegant beauty, or simplicity, and therefore so would the equation that described them. Therefore, the idea of mathematical beauty comes back to nature, to simplicity and to purity of ideas, and leads to the notion that by pursuing beauty you end up with truth. 

Unfortunately it is only available to watch on BBC iplayer for another few days, so if anyone wants to catch up download now!

knitting - a teaching aid for maths?

Today I was sent a link to a video that showed and discussed the use of knitting in the classroom as a teaching aid for maths. Below is a highlight of the video via You Tube. Click here for the full video on Teachers.tv

The use of knitting being used in schools to aid learning interests me greatly, especially as part of the aim of my creative project is to use knitting as a form of accessible and tactile numerical communication.

This teaching took place in Shaftesbury Primary School in London. The maths teacher had a passion for knitting, and recognised how the use of numeracy within the knitting process could make maths both more accessible and easier to understand for those pupils who may ordinarily struggle with numbers and give them a chance to shine.

Children who excelled in knitting were teamed with children who were good at maths, and they were given several different tasks to complete that tackled many different areas of mathematical learning, from a timed knitting 'race', which combined the use of measurement, time, prediction and recording of data, to the adding and subtraction of stitches to form a certain shape, to the understanding and calculation of costing a garment.

The teacher felt that the important part of learning through knitting was that it took numeracy out of books and brought it to life. It inspired the children, put maths into a context and gave them a tangible and visible result for their efforts.