Famous Mathematicians

Project #3278 on iSENSEProject.org

Students have been studying Geometry and Algebra and will consider the origins of both topics developed by famous mathematicians. Each student was assigned a mathematician to research. The Greatest Mathematicians website http://famous-mathematicians.org was used to provide a set of 32 famous mathematicians for the classroom and a starting point for student research. 

Students logged into iSense to view the defaulted map. This allowed them to see where Pythagorus was born, the subject he studied, and his probable year of birth.  Students contribute data manually to update the map.  Their Contributor Key to enter the data uses:  Label - Geometry Class, and Key - mathhistory101.

We talked about trends that we saw regarding the location of the birthplace of the mathematicians and why that may be. They were then allowed to explore the map and other features to answer a few simple questions about the visualizations. 

They worked in pairs to answer the following questions:

1. For this class data set, where were the most famous mathematicians born by continent? by country? Explain how you used a visualization to find your answers.

2. For this set of famous mathematicians, in what century were the most mathematicians born? Explain how you used a visualization to find your answer.

3. For this set of famous mathematicians, which subject was studied more: Geometry or Algebra? Explain how you used a visualization to find your answer.

4. Looking at our class map, what other trends do you see or questions you have about the geospatial data represented here?

https://www.latlong.net

Referenced LatLong for birthplace coordinates.