Understanding Culture
Culture is impacted by many forces. Mathematics is one of those forces. Use the questions to guide to make comment on the posts of at least two classmates.
- What is culture?
- How does mathematical information provide what we need to know about culture?
Tula post
What is defined as culture? According to a Cultural Anthropology course, “Culture is the patterns of learned and shared behavior and beliefs of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. It can also be described as the complex whole of collective human beliefs with a structured stage of civilization that can be specific to a nation or time period. Humans in turn use culture to adapt and transform the world they live in.” (What Is Culture? | Cultural Anthropology, n.d.). For example, it is unthinkable to wear shoes inside a Japanese home because this is the norm of an unwritten rule that governs their culture’s social behavior. Another cultural example is one’s language which is primarily an element of a traditional culture that we learn from our parents, siblings and so on. Another instance are the holidays specific to one’s cultural traditions and history. Another cultural occurrence are recreational interests such as sports and hobbies that parents may teach and pass on to their children. All of the above outline patterns of learned and shared behaviors, and beliefs in probably all humans.
Since mathematics is an international language, mathematical information provides us with what we need to know about culture. It allows to accomplish this by helping us understand the world around us in seeing the similarities and the differences among cultural groups. An article from Asia Society.org, sums the essence of understanding the world’s cultures through math as follows, “The fact is that the frame of knowledge and practice of mathematics was originated from the contributions of thinkers throughout the ages and across the world despite the cultural differences.” (Understanding the World Through Math, 2018).
This knowledge and practice has given us a way to understand patterns, to calculate relationships, and to predict the future, especially through mathematical modeling. Consequently, our world is interconnected, and everyday math shows these connections. In these terms, math helps us understand the world and different cultures, and we, in turn, use the world to understand math.
Nicole post
There are many aspects and characteristics that make up a culture. This includes religion, food, social habits, music and art. The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition defines culture as “shared patterns of behaviors and interaction, cognitive constructs, and understanding that we learn through socialization” (McKay, 2017a). We can further look at mathematics in culture, this is referred to as ethnomathematics. Ethnomathematics is used to understand culture and mathematics separately and bring this information together to make connections between them. The way that mathematics is used in each culture shows a lot about how those people think, problem solve, and prioritize different parts of life such as the calendar prioritized by the women of Egypt (McKay, 2017a). Math helps us make sense of the world and the cultures in it. Through the use of mathematical models, we can make global connections across countries and cultures. Math allows us to make sense of complex situations and using the universal language of math, people from different backgrounds can all interpret the same mathematical model and apply their findings back to their own culture. Data is collected, decisions are made based off models. Statistics help us understand different aspects of cultures around the world. “Economic and social data, cultural heritage, education, and employment are all different ways to survey a culture (McKay, 2017b).” Trends in culture can be studied such as crime, education, population, and economy. By analyzing this data, we can solve problems and predict the future (McKay, 2017c). Some might say math is as close to magic that we can get!
