Siyu Sun Math History Blog

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FL98Db7-5L8xFBSnnWn6tXbSuWfY06bNPEYtN-HBJmA/edit?usp=sharing My topic was on perspective and projective geometry. My presentation contained a brief history of perspective in art in the Renaissance and as I was doing my research, I found that I ended up talking about more math than I expected to. I found the math and theorems to be really interesting since up to that point, I had only viewed perspective from an artistic lens and looking into the math behind changed my perspective (haha). The art I did was of our math classroom and it was the first piece I did where I actually drew the perspective grid and followed it along. I chose to do a fish-eyed lens look and it was pretty challenging and I learned a lot. I tried to include a lot of what we learned in class in the drawing to look back on to. I forgot to take a picture of my art piece, but I donated it to the classroom. References: Andersen, K. (2009). The geometry of an art: The history of the...

      The most interesting thing for me was at the beginning of the article, when Ascher was talking about types of maps. I never really thought much about the  Mercator projection version of our world map, but the article made me realize that the world wouldn't translate so easily onto a flat sheet of paper because the world itself is not flat. The distances of the world map we see most often are actually not accurate, and Mercator projection conserves alignment rather than distance. It was an interesting thought experiment to think about different types of maps and then for the text to relate what we just thought about onto Marshall Island stick charts.     In the context of Marshall Island stick charts, embodied mathematics is important as the charts themselves are mathematical models of the the physical world. It links real concrete information to something we can visualize and digest. Ascher also mentions that navigators must lie down and feel the way ...