Technolandy

Day 5 (of 2025/26) #mathmonday – highlighting the “Good Parts Edition” of senior math – History of Math 11 via Recreational Mathematics 

I have a complicated history with mathematics… pun acknowledged based on the title.  I have loved math and hated it. Done very well with some part and realized the name was appropriate when “mean” averaging was applied in very cruel ways. I like thinking about math and finding out about why things work… but my brain was conditioned to not enjoy the process of memorizing formulas and hoping to know when to apply which because we never spent enough time on the ‘why’ and it always seemed more important to look for clues to understand ‘when’ a formula or algorithm was to be used.

I hate repeatedly solving math questions – beautify illustrated by my son one night fighting with him over some worksheet solutions where we were trying to give him some encouragement – pointing out that we knew he knew the answer to 9×2… and he agreed, because he already solved it, pointing at another part of the page with the digits 3×6 … they’re both 18… it’s just about arranging 3s.  That was a much better answer than writing down ’18’ multiple times.  

Many of us in education have also been further soured by the maths because of how big of a ‘gatekeeper’ it has been on graduation pathways with a systemic approach feeling that “math 11” needed to be part of the graduation, and the university entrance… and even when History of Math was first introduced in the BC curriculum, ‘others’ (looking at you post-secondary institutions) kept a focus on Foundations, Workplace, Pre-Calculus and Calculus and all those traditional algorithm-solving focused ways… when History of Math was staring us in the face – I teasingly refer to William Goldman’s Princess Bride when talking about it – I fully agree that it is the ‘good parts version’ of math… for those of us who are more humanities geared… more of an opportunity to look at the ‘why is pi’ rather than just trying to remember when it gets used in geometry… or is it trig?? Anyways, the fun part that there was never enough time to dive into during Algebra/Math class in the old curriculum (don’t do the math when reflecting on graduation dates!) and explore “why” Pi is magical and complex and weird and wonderful. 

This year, UBC was the first to put it up on its registration website, that for Arts/Humanities, there was no longer a math 11 requirement – so whatever the government wanted for the Dogwood would be good enough for them… which puts HoM back on the buffet table! 

Not that there is anything wrong with Workplace, Foundations, and the calculuses (calculi??) but I think we can lean differently and honour the thinking about math rather than only working on solving solutions. And yes, I expect some to throw me some hate and shade – when my son completed his HoM a few years back, his school did get a call to confirm that someone actually was getting credit for the course… I know Math Departments have not wanted to offer the course broadly – even we have started it as more of a Project Based Learning asynchronous learning program – leading students into the rabbit hole so they can then explore the warren that lies beneath a2+b2=c2. 

To support this mathematical thinking, I am going to be doing monday shares called “Recreational Mathematics” – originally inspired by a throwaway line in Dr Who and led to a lot of having fun with math over the past bunch of years for me… older thinking on this here: https://technolandy.wordpress.com/recreational-mathematics/

Here is the full video (18 mins): https://youtu.be/40uudirnQik?feature=shared

and the hype video: