Thursday, November 28, 2024

My Plan for Assignment 3 (with Nanxi)

 For this assignment, I had origianly planned to explore the work of Bhaskar II - specifically his book called Lilavati. This book contains a number of interesting, poetic problems, which give a flavour of ancient Indian school problems. Lilavati  is the first volume  of his main work Siddhanta Shiromani (”Crown of treatises”) alongside Bijaganita, Grahaganita and Goladhyaya. It is the most celebrated work of the traditionsl of mathematics in India. 

One hurdle that I encountered with this was that this work is in Sanskrit and though there are translations available, they are extremely hard to find unless I buy a book that contains them. So, instead I decided to partner up with Nanxi and explore the work of the Italian female Mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi. She was the first woman to publish a mathematics textbook and is best known for her work on the "Witch of Agnesi," a curve that holds significant value in the history of mathematics.

We have chosen to create a collage on the Witch of Agnesi.



4 comments:

  1. Manveen, thanks for the outline of the work you considered doing on the Lilavati (which also sounds fascinating!) I hope that in future you'll be able to get a copy of the translation of this very interesting book. I did try looking it up through the UBC Library, and it does look like there might be a translation in the math library! Here's a link to a preview and the call no. is QA32 .B4813 2001. That said, it's also a great project to look into the life and work of Maria Agnesi (and you know that I wrote that play, Witches of Agnesi...feel free to view it if that's helpful). A collage sounds like a great medium for the project. I strongly suggest you try constructing the curve known as the "Witch of Agnesi" -- it's quite beautiful and not hard to make!

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  2. Oops, the link disappeared there. Let me try again:
    https://books.google.ca/books?id=AoX5q7JjM2kC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

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  3. FYI here's the link to my play, Witches of Agnesi:
    https://vimeo.com/375044253

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  4. Thank you, Susan, this is really helpful. I remember also watching a clip of this play in class!

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