Every Monday after recess when we would usually do math, instead we study a mathematician.  Instead of studying modern mathematicians, we study ones that were around as early as 560 BCE!  Our teacher makes a powerpoint and we take notes from it.

Afterwards, we usually have an activity that we do that practices things that the mathematician discovered.  The recent ones we’ve been looking into are Archimedes and Lagrange, both of which contributed a lot to the math we do today.

Some of the things in the powerpoints are short stories, famous anecdotes, fun facts and biographies about the mathematicians.

After a while, our class started noticing some things in common with all many of the mathematicians, like that they all do astronomy and have wealthy family backgrounds.  I think studying mathematicians is a really good idea, because it benefits our learning and also gives us great information about how we do math today.

by lordofthepies05