Blog Response #13: Models and Maps from the Marshal Islands

 I am so impressed by the concept of stick charts and why and how it came to existence. The Marshal Islands consist of many atolls and islands over a large area, so for the people to maintain links between all these islands, they depended on sea travel. Navigational knowledge was important for the people, and from this need, to ensure that travelling was made easier, they studied the movement of the waves and represented these studies using their stick charts like the Mattang. It is amazing how a need translated to a means, and how this means was made into a workpiece that reflect ideas in math such as geometry. 

    When we ask the question on why embodied mathematics is significant in the history of mathematics, one idea I can think of is maybe it is one way how ancient cultures discovered their own mathematical ideas. A great example is from this reading, where the Marshal Islanders felt the direction the swells were taking them, as well as they observed the movement of the waves, to determine the pattern of the swells and represent them in their stick charts. This is an example of learning from the environment that they were in. 

I think embodied mathematics in a classroom would mean students learning math experientially by learning in and from the environment that they are in. One example would be students modelling the sinusoidal motion of a sin graph by waving their arms in the motion (like an octopus) or having students use their index fingers to follow the movement of the sin wave. The student would follow the path of the circumference of the circle starting from (0,0) using their left index figure, but at the same time following the path of a sin wave using their right index finger starting at (0,0). This is to understand the sinusoidal motion of a sin graph. 

 

 

References 

Asher, M. (1995). Models and Maps from the Marshal Islands: A Case in Ethnomathematics. Historia Mathematica, vol. 22, pp. 347 –370.