The book presents the main features of the Wasan tradition, which is the indigenous mathematics that developed in Japan during the Edo period. (1600-1868). It begins with a description of the first mathematical textbooks published in the 17th century, then shifts to the work of the two leading mathematicians of this tradition, Seki Takakazu and Takebe Katahiro. The book provides substantial information on the historical and intellectual context, the role played by the Chinese mathematical treatises introduced at the late 16th century, and an analysis of Seki’s and Takebe’s contribution to the development of algebra and calculus in Japan.

This book offers insights into the history of mathematics education, covering both the current state of the art of research and the methodology of the field. History of mathematics education is treated in the book as a part of social history. This book grew out of the presentations delivered at the International Congress on Mathematics Education in Hamburg. Modern development and growing internationalization of mathematics education made it clear that many urgent questions benefit from a historical approach. The chapters present viewpoints from the following countries: Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia,Spain and Sweden. Each chapter represents significant directions of historical studies. The book is a valuable source for every historian of mathematics education and those interested in mathematics education and its development.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries Japan was totally isolated from the West by imperial decree. During that time, a unique brand of homegrown mathematics flourished, one that was completely uninfluenced by developments in Western mathematics. People from all walks of life--samurai, farmers, and merchants--inscribed a wide variety of geometry problems on wooden tablets called sangaku and hung them in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan. Sacred Mathematics is the first book published in the West to fully examine this tantalizing--and incredibly beautiful--mathematical tradition. Fukagawa Hidetoshi and Tony Rothman present for the first time in English excerpts from the travel diary of a nineteenth-century Japanese mathematician, Yamaguchi Kanzan, who journeyed on foot throughout Japan to collect temple geometry problems. The authors set this fascinating travel narrative--and almost everything else that is known about temple geometry--within the broader cultural and historical context of the period. They explain the sacred and devotional aspects of sangaku, and reveal how Japanese folk mathematicians discovered many well-known theorems independently of mathematicians in the West--and in some cases much earlier. The book is generously illustrated with photographs of the tablets and stunning artwork of the period. Then there are the geometry problems themselves, nearly two hundred of them, fully illustrated and ranging from the utterly simple to the virtually impossible. Solutions for most are provided. A unique book in every respect, Sacred Mathematics demonstrates how mathematical thinking can vary by culture yet transcend cultural and geographic boundaries.

This is the first comprehensive International Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education, covering a wide spectrum of epochs and civilizations, countries and cultures. Until now, much of the research into the rich and varied history of mathematics education has remained inaccessible to the vast majority of scholars, not least because it has been written in the language, and for readers, of an individual country. And yet a historical overview, however brief, has become an indispensable element of nearly every dissertation and scholarly article. This handbook provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and systematic aid for researchers around the world in finding the information they need about historical developments in mathematics education, not only in their own countries, but globally as well. Although written primarily for mathematics educators, this handbook will also be of interest to researchers of the history of education in general, as well as specialists in cultural and even social history.

This volume traces back the history of interaction between the “computational” or “algorithmic” aspects of elementary mathematics and mathematics education throughout ages. More specifically, the examples of mathematical practices analyzed by the historians of mathematics and mathematics education who authored the chapters in the present collection show that the development (and, in some cases, decline) of counting devices and related computational practices needs to be considered within a particular context to which they arguably belonged, namely, the context of mathematics instruction; in their contributions the authors also explore the role that the instruments played in formation of didactical approaches in various mathematical traditions, stretching from Ancient Mesopotamia to the 20th century Europe and North America.

This book gathers the proceedings of the conference "Cultures of Mathematics and Logic," held in Guangzhou, China. The event was the third in a series of interdisciplinary, international conferences emphasizing the cultural components of philosophy of mathematics and logic. It brought together researchers from many disciplines whose work sheds new light on the diversity of mathematical and logical cultures and practices. In this context, the cultural diversity can be diachronical (different cultures in different historical periods), geographical (different cultures in different regions), or sociological in nature.