All posts by Rushdha

Videos- Rushdha Rafeek

1.

The title of this video is “Hexaflexagons.” In this video Vi-hart talks about how a student named Arthur.H.Stone discovered and invented hexaflexagons with strips of papers. She cuts-off ends of the paper that could not fit in her English binder and then folds those strips of papers to create different shapes such as hexagons. Each time they were folded in a certain way it revealed more than two faces or sides creating a flexagon.

Title- “Doodling in Math: Sick Number Games” In this video Vi-hart she writes down numbers in order and arranges them in spirals known as ulam spiral to find out patterns prime numbers can make. She also doodles around to find patterns in pascals triangle by using this number game and highlighting prime numbers to create a picture with different sizes of triangles.

Title- “Doodling in Math: Stars” This is a great video to learn to draw many pointed stars in many different ways. She basically shows how factoring numbers are found in real world such as in stars.

Title- “Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant [1 of 3]”  This video is about how Fibonacci numbers are found in living things such as plants and other things. She practically experiments on plants to show how Fibonacci numbers exists in spirals and many other geometric drawings.

2. These videos are simply amazing! I am definitely inspired how Vi-hart makes great connections to math with her “doodle stuff” She was very creative in her drawings in the videos that made me wonder how artistic and yet clever enough to relate every single thing to math in some way. One thing I learnt is that she appreciated math more than I did and in some sense she made great attempts to prove the math facts herself by experimenting on real world materials instead of simply relying to the things she is taught in class. For example discovering the Fibonacci sequence in spirals of pine cones, pineapples, flowers and many others. And one question I like to know is if she came up with a math story every time she doodled in a math class?

3. I really enjoyed watching these videos. Vi-hart has a unique approach to math by making connections to real word applications. I also learnt a lot from “Spirals, Fibonacci and being a plant” video. I think the way she demonstrated on the flowers and other things to describe the Fibonacci numbers were very beneficial. And not only that she made math seem very unique and an enjoyable subject, and quite often math is not observed this way in a classroom because it’s mostly taught in a very boring way by spoon feeding facts to students where they don’t have the opportunity to be inspired with the mathematical concepts. I found this video also relevant to what is being taught in class especially with the Fibonacci numbers and its unique properties. She also shows how math is an art as described in the reading “Lock hart’s Lament” and uses her creative imaginations in her explorations. I honestly wish I was taught this way back in school.