Oregon promotes teacher program that seeks to undo 'racism in mathematics'

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One of the challenges faced by researchers in this area is the fact that they are limited by their own mathematical and cultural frameworks. The discussions of the mathematical ideas of other cultures recast these into a Western framework in order to identify and understand them.[citation needed] This raises the questions of how many mathematical ideas evade notice simply because they lack similar Western mathematical counterparts, and of how to draw the line classifying mathematical from non-mathematical ideas.

Some examples and major contributors[edit]
The majority of research in this area has been about the intuitive mathematical thinking of small-scale, traditional, indigenous cultures including: Aboriginal Australians,[31] the indigenous people of Liberia,[32] Native Americans in North America,[33] Pacific Islanders,[34] Brazilian construction foremen,[35] and various tribes in Africa.[36][37]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnomathematics#The_mathematics_of_different_cultures

It seems they may be looking for ideas. A brainstorming type of session on how to be more inclusive to all/other cultures.

 

The OP is misleading. No one is advocating allowing students to have alternate answers.

 

The Pythagoreans were a religious sect. A religion based on mathematics.

 

You need to read more of the history of science. Pythagoras himself studied in both India and Egypt

 

Most of the Greek philosophical thought is profoundly religious. This is why Christianity has so many overtones from Platonism, which was actually the main "religion" of the Age.

 

It seems to have been rather common at one time, religions based on philosophy rather than the worship of a god. Taoism and Confucianism come to mind, as well as Greek schools of thought.

 

Yet you don’t even know what it is and you are being mouthy.

 

I don't doubt it. But the Egyptians were practical, not mathematical.

 

What is the point of that? Mathematics is useful because bridges based on mathematics don't fall down.

 

The Persians learned their math from the Greeks and the Arabs from the Persians and Greeks.

 

By the time they are in High School, yes.

I remember we had a math teacher at the 8th-grade level who used a famous Egyptian tract on right triangles to make his students reason back to Pythagoras on their own. Fascinating, it wouldn't work nowadays because we bring Pythagoras on in the 4th grade

They knew their math was accurate beyond any practical need, that's why they trusted it to build the Pyramids

 

Actually the first two pyramids the Egyptians attempted were failures. The are known as the collapsed pyramid, which collapsed, and the bent pyramid which started at two steep and angle which had to be reduced half way up. The Egyptians were marvelous people but their math was trial and error.

 

Until the last 3 pyramids proved it beyond question. The mistakes you refer to had to do with materials science, not mathematics

 

But math is still racist.

 

The best and most well known example of bad math is telling people we can insure 45 million people and save $2500 a year on our premiums. Gruber is still laughing.

 

You do not prove a theorem by using it successfully. You prove it through logical demonstration.

 

Quite so:

Pythagoreanism became the quest for establishing the fundamental essences of reality. Pythagorean philosophers advanced the unshakable belief that the essence of all thing are numbers and that the universe was sustained by harmony.

And this idea caused science to blossom and allowed the Europeans to eclispe all other civilizations in science, art, music and architecture.

 

It's complex.
It's trying to understand how different cultures think.

 

It seems you see everything through the eyes of racist. Math also? Wow.

 

Everything is racist, or so the left says.

 

You are now claiming to be leftist?

 

The Greek mixture of science and mysticism was probably what prevented the flowering of the sciences that could have come about from Periclean Athens. The Greeks became fascinated with the "perfection" of mathematical proofs to the extent that they despised actual real-world tests of their theorems in favor of logical "proofs" that had only tenuous connections to reality if any at all. Thus Aristotle was famous for positing the "common sense" idea that a light ball and a heavy one fell at different rates until Galilieo actually dropped two of them together and saw for himself that they both hit the ground together. Plato thought that our reality itself was only a faint shadow of the perfect "forms" which we would never see or directly experience but which were more real than reality itself. Thus robbed of any real connection to, or use in, the actual world science became an interesting hobby, an effete pastime for philosophers who despised the 'gross reality' of the buildings the Romans made several times too strong because they tested them by having the foreman stand underneath when the scaffolding was removed rather than calculating strength with formulae

 

The Greek mixture of science and mysticism was probably what prevented the flowering of the sciences that could have come about from Periclean Athens. The Greeks became fascinated with the "perfection" of mathematical proofs to the extent that they despised actual real-world tests of their theorems in favor of logical "proofs" that had only tenuous connections to reality if any at all. Thus Aristotle was famous for positing the "common sense" idea that a light ball and a heavy one fell at different rates until Galilieo actually dropped two of them together and saw for himself that they both hit the ground together. Plato thought that our reality itself was only a faint shadow of the perfect "forms" which we would never see or directly experience but which were more real than reality itself. Thus robbed of any real connection to, or use in, the actual world science became an interesting hobby, an effete pastime for philosophers who despicse the 'gross reality of the buildings the Romans made several times too strong because the tested them having the foreman stand underneath when the scaffolding was removed rather than calculating strength with formulae

 

The following provides a potential explanation -- and that is the uncoupling of genetic mutations and natural selection.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129638953