February 15, 2023

MATHEMATICS THROUGH THE LENSE OF HISTORY

This session was conducted by SCERT Delhi for the Directorate of Education's teacher at SCERT Auditorum in between 14 -16 February 2023.










Today is 15th February. 15 reminds us about the first 3 x 3 magic square whose magical constant is 15.
In India the first 4 x 4 magic square can be seen in  Khajurao (MP)




Look at the three questions:- 
The first question is based on BODMAS rule and the correct answer is 9 not 1.
In the second question, a teacher marks wrong for writing 5 + 5 + 5 for a question 5 x 3 = ? though the answer is correct because 5 x 3 = 3 x 5




Bakshali Manuscript (Red) shows the first zero symbol where a big dot seems to be used to indicate zero. The image at the bottom (right side) shows the number 270 written over it. It is known as Rama rock and can be seen in Chaturbhuja temple of Gwalior fort. It is said King Jayvardhana 2 used to pluck flowers to offer the god from his garden that was 270 hastas long and 184 hastas short. 


Think over it:- 
1. While bisecting a line segment we take the arc length more than half from both the sides. Why?
2. Why cutting the arc first time gives the angle 60 degree?
3. Read Einstein Car Puzzle 
4. Allow students to explore the possibilities of angles of triangles more than , less than or equal to 180 degrees.
5. Why 0/0 is not valid?
6. Why (- ) times (-) is plus?















Bhoot Samkhya is an art of writing numbers without the use of digits.

The Kavi Surya wrote a book in Sanskrit whose every line written in the reverse order makes the other two lines. This shows the Palindrome (121, 14641, 123454321- - -) character of a number where the third and fourth lines of every quadruple is obtained by reversing the first two lines. The beautiful part of this poem is that the first two lines is dedicated to Sri Rama whereas its reverse couplet is dedicated to Sri Krishna.









If the syllable of all four parts of the shlokas are placed together we see a beautiful symmetrical pattern.

In Shishu Pal Vadh sloka if every syllable are placed separately in a box and its mirror image is also placed together we get a 8 x 8 square matrix whose boarder is the first line of the shloka in all the directions.


 Magh wrote a book Shishu Pal Vadh that depicts the  mathematical beauty in it. If you place the first three lines in diagonal order then you find word (र) at the centre of the bottom layer. the fourth line starts with green in the first layer and alphabets are place in circle. The third inner most layer has the word (Shishupal Vadh शिशु पाल वध ) written in it



For any queries you can write to me 

Email:- rkthakur1974@gmail,com

Twitter:- @R_K_THAKUR

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