The Relative Emphasis Upon Mechanical Skill and Applications of Elementary Mathematics

1921 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 435-443
Author(s):  
Fiske Allen

The teaching of elementary mathematics has two distinct purposes, quite closely connected with each other and yet easily distinguished. The pupil must develop a skill in the manipulation of the symbols of elementary mathematics and he must develop a power to apply them to the solution of life problems. By special emphasis upon either phase of the subject an ability can be developed in it without a corresponding ability in the other phase, and sometimes at the expense of ability in the other phase. It is easy to develop in pupils a high degree of skill in the mechanical processes of computation with almost no ability to decide in a particular problem what process is to be used. And in pioneer days many men were quite able to solve the problems met in daily life though knowing nothing of the use of figures for purposes of computation. It has been very interesting to me to note that pupils in the third and fourth grades, utterly innocent of the use of the symbols in division of fractions, will frequently solve problems involving division of fractious more readily than will those same pupils after they have been taught to “invert the divisor and multiply.” This does not mean that skill in computation with figures stands in the way of solving concrete problems, but that during the time devoted to acquiring the skill they have lost power in thinking number relations, possibly through a transfer of interest.

1937 ◽  
Vol 21 (246) ◽  
pp. 314-317
Author(s):  
E. H. Neville ◽  
T. A. A. Broadbent

My function in this discussion is the humble one of attempting to supply a rough scaffolding into which the durable parts of the edifice will be fitted by the other three speakers.The teaching of algebra has never been dominated by a single work in the way in which Euclid for so long a time dominated the teaching of geometry For that reason, perhaps, the revolts in geometry have corresponded to quiet reforms in algebra, and the problems involved, though equally important, have never received the same amount of attention. On the teaching of the subject in schools, excellent books exist; there is Sir Percy Nunn’s classic, and more recently, a book by Durell, and much relevant matter in Godfrey and Siddons, Teaching of Elementary Mathematics.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Marygrace Hemme

Through my reading of the section of Pleshette Dearmitt’s book The Right to Narcissism, entitled “Kristeva: the Rebirth of Narcissus,” I illustrate the way in which DeArmitt’s reading of Narcissus is reflected in Julia Kristeva’s conception of genius. DeArmitt describes narcissism as a structure through which subjectivity, language, self-love, and love for the other come about. Narcissism develops through a metaphorical relation of identification with a “loving third” in which the subject-in-formation is transferred to the site of the other, to the place from which he or she is seen and heard through the words of the mother directed at an other. The emerging subject catches the words of others and repeats them. The speech of the other, then, is a model or pattern with which the subject-in-formation identifies repeatedly, and it is through identifying with the third that the forming subject becomes like the other, a speaking subject herself. All love comes from narcissism because it is a repetition of this identification and transference. I connect this account to Kristeva’s Female Genius Trilogy by claiming that these works are love stories since they are based on a repetition of the narcissistic structure on a cultural level in their content and in their form, though for each genius it manifests through a different register. For Hannah Arendt the relation is between the actor and the spectator; for Melanie Klein it is between the analyst and the analysand; and for Colette it is between the writer and the reader. 


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Włoskowicz

Abstract Materials from topographic surveys had a serious impact on the labels on the maps that were based on these surveys. Collecting toponyms and information that were to be placed as labels on a final map, was an additional duty the survey officers were tasked with. Regulations concerning labels were included in survey manuals issued by the Austro-Hungarian Militärgeographisches Institut in Vienna and the Polish Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny in Warsaw. The analyzed Austro-Hungarian regulations date from the years 1875, 1887, 1894, 1903 (2nd ed.). The oldest manual was issued during the Third Military Survey of Austria-Hungary (1:25,000) and regulated the way it was conducted (it is to be supposed that the issued manual was mainly a collection of regulations issued prior to the survey launch). The Third Survey was the basis for the 1:75,000 Spezialkarte map. The other manuals regulated the field revisions of the survey. The analyzed Polish manuals date from the years 1925, 1936, and 1937. The properties of the labels resulted from the military purpose of the maps. The geographical names’ function was to facilitate land navigation whereas other labels were meant to provide a military map user with information that could not be otherwise transmitted with standard map symbols. A concern for not overloading the maps with labels is to be observed in the manuals: a survey officer was supposed to conduct a preliminary generalization of geographical names. During a survey both an Austro-Hungarian and a Polish survey officer marked labels on a separate “label sheet”. The most important difference between the procedures in the two institutes was that in the last stage of work an Austro-Hungarian officer transferred the labels (that were to be placed on a printed map) from the “label sheet” to the hand-drawn survey map, which made a cartographer not responsible for placing them in the right places. In the case of the Polish institute the labels remained only on the “label sheets”.


1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-436
Author(s):  
Chris H. Knights

AbstractThis article is the third in a series of studies on The History of the Rechabites. The first, "The Story of Zosimus or The History of the Rechabites?,"1 established the independent identity of this text within the Christian monastic work, The Story of Zosimus, and was a sort of prolegomena to the study of this text. The second, "Towards a Critical-Introduction to The History of the Rechabites,"2 sought to address the standard introductory issues, such as date, original language, provenance and purpose. The present paper seeks to examine the text verse-by-verse, and to offer a commentary on it. Or, rather, an initial commentary. No commentary of any sort has ever been offered on the Greek text of HistRech before, and it would be foolhardy to claim that any one scholar could perceive all the allusions and meanings in a particular text at a first attempt. This commentary, then, is offered in the same spirit as my two previous studies on HistRech: as a step along the way towards unravelling the meaning of this pseudepigraphon about the Rechabites, not as the last word on the subject.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 175-179
Author(s):  
Liana Cusmano

Liana Cusmano’s interview with poet George Amabile focuses on his prize-winning 2018 collection Martial Music and the art of writing in general. He offers insights on the poetic process, how to research and produce a collection of poems. Amabile’s poetry is inspired by what he has experienced or witnessed. He talks about dealing with war and trauma. He shares his frustration with daily life getting in the way of the creative process. “Life is the subject and the inspirational/ motivational source of our work, but it also sucks up our time and frustrates our ability to give our unstinted attention to our creative efforts,” says George Amabile.


1938 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Corder ◽  
I. A. Richmond

The Roman Ermine Street, having crossed the Humber on the way to York from Lincoln, leaves Brough Haven on its west side, and the little town of Petuaria to the east. For the first half-mile northwards from the Haven its course is not certainly known: then, followed by the modern road, it runs northwards through South Cave towards Market Weighton. In the area thus traversed by the Roman road burials of the Roman age have already been noted in sufficient quantity to suggest an extensive cemetery. The interment which is the subject of the present note was found on 10th October 1936, when men laying pipes at right angles to the modern road, in the carriage-drive of Mr. J. G. Southam, having cut through some 4 ft. of blown sand, came upon a mass of mixed Roman pottery, dating from the late first to the fourth century A.D. Bones of pig, dog, sheep, and ox were also represented. Presently, at a depth of about 5 ft., something attracted closer attention. A layer of thin limestone slabs was found, covering two human skeletons, one lying a few feet from the west margin of the modern road, the other parallel with the road and some 8 ft. from its edge. The objects described below were found with the second skeleton, and the first to be discovered was submitted by Mr. Southam to Mr. T. Sheppard, F.S.A.Scot., Director of the Hull Museums, who visited the site with his staff. All that can be recorded of the circumstances of the discovery is contained in the observations then made, under difficult conditions. ‘Slabs of hard limestone’, it was reported, ‘taken from a local quarry of millepore oolite and forming the original Roman road, were distinctly visible beneath the present roadway—one of the few points where the precise site of the old road has been located. On the side of this… a burial-place has been constructed. What it was like originally it is difficult to say, beyond that a layer of thin … slabs of limestone occurred over the skeletons. This had probably been kept in place or supported by some structure of wood, as several large iron nails, some bent at right angles, were among the bones.’ If this were all that could be said about the burials, they would hardly merit a place in these pages. The chief interest of the record would be its apparent identification of the exact course of the Roman road at a point where this had hitherto been uncertain. Three objects associated with the second skeleton are, however, of exceptional interest.


Author(s):  
Amparo García Cuadrado

This article approaches the study of the private library of the Murcian land surveyor Francisco Falcón de los Reyes, from the first half of the eighteenth century, which constitutes a clear example of the relationship between education and written culture. From the data extracted from a postmortem inventory and the subsequent appraisal and partition of goods among the heirs, we carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of said library. First, the text provides a biographical profile of this geometer, a descendant of slaves (new Christians), and describes the formative precariousness of these professionals in their time. The quantitative analysis of the bibliographic collection and its comparison with other private collections from similar socioeconomic fields indicate the importance of this particular collection. The qualitative study of authors and titles shows, on one hand, the high degree of mathematical training of the subject, who is shown to be a recipient of the fundamentally Valencian pre-illustrated reformist scientific mainstream, and, on the other hand, the purpose with which those books were incorporated into the funds of the collection. Together with the library, which we could call professional, due to its scientific nature, the inventoried religious matter in the form of printed documents makes up another interesting part of the collection, one of a catechetical nature in its various formative levels


2020 ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Pablo Ferrando-García

We present an analysis of the filmic representation of Funny Games to highlight its playful structure as a game of games. Through a series of narrative efforts, a double operation is carried out, aimed at a specular relationship with the viewer. On the one hand, Michael Haneke’s film offers a series of expressive mechanisms that are aimed at shifting the objective gaze to subjective in order to transfer the perception of the subject presented to the viewer. On the other, it presents a brutal clash between the registers of comedy and tragedy through the young psychopaths, Peter and Paul, who emerge as contemporary clowns, in the figures of Pierrot and Harlequin, whose negative resonances lead to the incarnation of absolute EVil. In turn, the family are the victims, and this is presented as the prototype of the family institution while Peter and Paul are mere archetypes. In this way, the cinematographic screen is turned into a device for interrogating its modes of representation and, in turn, offers a solid moral dimension. The ultimate objective of the Hanekian story is to cover it with “a pedagogical function: to familiarize the cinema, to bring it closer to a daily life so that it speaks from you to you to the experience –to the conscience– of the viewer” (Font, 2002, p. 16). Resumen Nuestra propuesta trata de desarrollar un análisis de la representación fílmica con el propósito de poner de relieve la estructura lúdica de Funny Games como juego de juegos. A través de toda una serie de gestiones narrativas se efectúa una doble operación dirigidas a una relación especular con el espectador. Por un lado, la película de Michael Haneke ofrece una serie de mecanismos expresivos que van encaminados al desplazamiento de la mirada objetiva en subjetiva con el fin de trasladar la percepción del sujeto de la enunciación al narratario/espectador. Por otro, presenta un brutal choque entre el registro de la comedia con la tragedia a través de los jóvenes psicópatas, Peter y Paul, que se erigen en los payasos contemporáneos, en las figuras de Pierrot y Arlequín, cuyas resonancias negativas conducen a la encarnación del Mal absoluto. A su vez, George y Anne Schöber son las víctimas y estos son expuestos como el prototipo de la institución familiar mientras Peter y Paul son meros arquetipos narrativos. De este modo, la pantalla cinematográfica se convierte en un dispositivo de interrogación sobre sus modos de representación y, a su vez, ofrece una sólida dimensión moral. El objetivo último del relato hanekiano es revestirlo de “una función pedagógica: familiarizar el cine, acercarlo a una cotidianidad para que hable de tú a tú a la experiencia –a la conciencia– del espectador” (Font, 2002: 16).


Author(s):  
Cristina I. Tica

The author seeks to contribute to the field of frontier studies with bioarchaeological data, in the hopes of understanding how living in relative proximity, but under different sociopolitical organizations, may affect health. The goal of this research is to examine differences in overall health between two groups that have been characterized in the literature as “Romans” and “barbarians.” The research uses skeletal remains to address how the daily life of people under Roman-Byzantine control compared to that of their neighbors, the “barbarians” to the north. Comparing two contemporaneous populations from the territory of modern Romania—and dating from the third to the sixth centuries CE—the study examines health status and traumatic injuries. One collection comes from the territory under Roman-Byzantine control, the site of Ibida (Slava Rusă) from the Roman province of Scythia Minor, and the other originates from the Târgşor site, located to the north of the Danube frontier, in what was considered the “barbaricum.” Separated by a definite frontier, the Danube River, meant to (at least ideologically) segregate them to their divided worlds, these populations might have been more interconnected than the carefully promulgated imperial doctrine would have us believe.


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