Mathematics Program Presents
Finding Mathematics in Hridaya Kolams
Friday, February 16, 2018
Hegeman 204
1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Sunita Vatuk, City College of New York
There is a lot of talk about math being &lquo;everywhere&rquo; in &lquo;daily life,&rquo; and I would argue that most (all?) mathematicians understand how to find it. But the process of finding math in unexpected places is something that most of us learned by osmosis rather than consciously.
Many South Indian Hindus have at least one god in their home—a statue that they worship every day. The daily &lquo;puja&rquo; often involves making a design out of rice powder in front of the god. We will look at two variations of this design, called a Hridaya kolam. (Hridaya = heart, kolam = designs made from powder in South India.)
After learning to make the two standard designs, we will embark on an exploration to find some mathematics in them—making algorithms, generalizing, looking for structure, explaining what we find, coming up with useful notation, deciding on definitions, and so on. Different students will be free to follow different paths through the exploration.
Sunita Vatuk has a Ph.D. in differential geometry from Princeton University. As part of her teaching at the University of Colorado (Boulder), Rutgers University (Piscataway), and City University of New York she has worked extensively with high school math teachers. That work sparked an interest in the existence and nature of mathematical thinking outside of research mathematics, including but not limited to origami and textile production. This talk is based on over 80 interviews with kolam experts and hundreds of designs she learned as a Fulbright scholar affiliated with the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Hegeman 204