Assignments for Week 1

R = Readings ._._. W = Writings

1. (W) Send me an e-mail message telling about yourself:
   • Where you are. Do you expect to be on the TAMU campus at all during this semester?
   • What your "situation" is: Do you work full-time, part-time, or not at all? Doing what? What degree (if any) are you working toward, and how far along are you in the degree plan? Any "complications" I should know about?
   • (optional) Any other personal information you feel like mentioning (age, gender, ethnicity, number of children, ...).
   • What library resources are available to you.
   • Have you taken a Web-based or distance-learning course before?
   • What you hope to get out of this course.
   I hope that you will write this self-introduction in a form that will be suitable for distribution to the other students in the class. If some or all of it is for my eyes only, please so indicate. (Once our Vista page is operational, I'll ask you repost it there.)

2. (R) Read my "lecture" for the week.

3. (R) Read Chapter 1 of Katz (Egypt and Mesopotamia).

4. (W) Homework for Monday, Sept. 4: Katz pp. 25-27, Exercises 2, 8, 9, 12, 14, 18, 24, 28.
   Don't get into a sweat; the main point is to appreciate how inconvenient the ancient notations were.

5. (R) What happened before Egypt? It is hard to know precisely about peoples whose written records were primitive or nonexistent. Perhaps the closest we can come is to look at isolated tribes that are still alive today. Here are two recent anthropological research papers, whose conclusions seem to point in opposite directions:
   • P. Gordon, "Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia," Science 306 (15 October 2004) 496-499.
   • S. Dehaene, V. Izard, P. Pica, and E. Spelke, "Core Knowledge of Geometry in an Amazonian Indigene Group," Science 311 (20 January 2006) 381-384.
   (You should have no trouble accessing Science -- or any other journal I cite -- through the TAMU Evans Library portal. However, I do have trouble creating direct Web links to the articles.)
   At a less isolated level (and much farther north), we have J. Lipka, "Culturally Negotiated Schooling: Toward a Yup'ik Mathematics," Journal of American Indian Education 33 (May 1994) Number 3 .

6. (R, optional) Clearly we could surf the Web forever, and I don't expect you to read everything I found interesting. But if you're still waiting for your Katz book to arrive in the mail, you might like these (lighter reading than the foregoing, actually):
   • I found the Inuit article above while searching for information on the Maya. Maya math is very popular in precollege education right now, so there is a lot on the Web. Type "Maya mathematics" into SCIRUS; browse and enjoy. (Don't feel obliged to read all 29,554 hits; even the relevant ones quickly become repetitive.) If you're in too much of a hurry to play the Web game, here are two good sites I noted down (in 2003): Michiel Berger ._. St. Andrews. (The second one has a link to a reference list (things on actual paper!).)
   • The development of "culturally appropriate" pedagogy for minority populations is highly controversial. Although there is a huge difference between an isolated village in Alaska and a high school in Harlem, the Inuit article reminded me of this interesting debate:
     • Diane Ravitch, "Multiculturalism," American Scholar 59 (Summer 1990) 337-354;
     • Molefi Kete Asante and D. Ravitch, "Multiculturalism: An Exchange," American Scholar 60 (Spring 1991) 267-276.