math is the best place to showcase different contributions over time… africa hasn’t done much cause math requires secure and stable environment over the long term (you hungry you don’t research math…)

bah!

In sixth grade I was fortunate enough to get an introduction into “ethnomath” from what could have been the flakiest teacher/professor of my academic career (which, to this point includes Law School). The class spent approximately a month learning about the Mayan numerical system and how different cultures “interpret” math. Meanwhile, the students who were being instructed by the other math teacher were busy learning pre-Algebra and elementary geometry. Luckily I was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to spring for a tutor who was only aware of the evil-white male-patriarchical interpretation of math.

Ron Eglash, mentioned in the article, has lots of examples here: http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.htm

I think this field is concerned more with the History of Mathematics and its teaching than with Mathematics itself. For instance, the study of fractals themselves is pretty much devoid of reference to any culture, however he appears to want to point out that African crafts employed fractals.

If it get people studying math, that’s a good thing. If, however, they reject more advanced studies and think that the particular math involved in old artifacts represents the entirety of that subject, then this is a bad thing.

If you ever needed a better example of why MacDonald’s employees need to have little pictures of the food on

But seriously, the guy really doesn’t know what he’s talking about, India is traditionally strong in mathematics, that’s why there are so msny Indians in IT.