Flashback this week as I read the materials to 2009 Malcolm deciding whether to become a teacher or go to culinary school. If I wasn't a teacher right now I'd most likely be a chef, and as someone who has spent/does spend a lot of time in the kitchen I can appreciate the mathematics inherent in the craft of preparing food. I grew up making recipes with my grandma, most of which she had memorized, and I scrambled in my adult life to gather them from her and write them down somewhere. My grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer in June of 2021 and between then and November of that year when she passed away she wrote all of her recipes down for me. Something that I will keep and one day pass along to my own kids. As a kid I didn't appreciate the mathematical thinking or patterns in these recipes but I can certainly see them now.
Knitting, crocheting, cooking, and other practices involve a lot of mathematical thinking in terms of proportions, logic, geometry, and others. The key takeaway of this week's introduction is the change in attitude required to recognize the inherent mathematics in these skills. This is the message that I try to pass on to my students when we do math - that by keeping an open mind and acknowledging the interconnectedness of math in life and in most things we do, there is a way to deepen your understanding. My students are very into finger weaving the last few weeks as one of the teachers in my school started a club, so I encouraged them this week to work those skills and make some interesting things.
Belcastro's (2013) article, Adventures in Mathematical Knitting, details her long-standing passion for knitting and crafting mathematical objects, namely Klein bottles. Belcastro argues that crafting these objects enhances understanding because it requires a deep comprehension of the abstractions that are being created.
My first stop in the article was the challenge Belcastro faced early on in the designs of mathematical knitting. As someone who is not and has never been a knitter, I can't imagine the difficulty in planning out the twists and surface texture needed in designing something like a Klein bottle. The design has to fit together mathematically as well as aesthetically, as Belcastro explains, so there are multiple layers of challenges inherent in a task such as this one.
It's not overtly there but is fairly easy to make the connection to math when you look at fibre arts such as weaving, knitting, crocheting. The geometry and the patterns are evident in any beautiful piece of work. Cooking and knitting were both mathematical hobbies of my grandma, one of which I picked up and the other I didn't, but it's clear that she had a mathematical mind for these things. Her third hobby was drinking coffee, which I've also taken a liking to, and is rich with mathematics on its own. Weighing beans, heating water to a specific temperature, measuring pour rate; there are mathematical concepts in many hobbies that we don't think of.
Hi Malcom! I think it’s interesting to read about your decision about teacher or chef, thanks for sharing. How special to have your grandma’s recipes. My mom is a fantastic cook and baker, but it must skip a generation, as I feel accomplished if I make toast (I’m not kidding…). Do you find that the math present in culinary arts needs to be much more precise in baking as opposed to cooking? That’s how I’ve always imagined it, but, I have very little actual, practical experience to draw on.
ReplyDeleteI think your description of your article highlights what we as math teachers are constantly trying to do - to connect mathematical concepts to real application, whether in students’ future careers or current hobbies, sports, etc. When I was teaching, I sometimes felt like the parent trying to hide vegetables in food, trying to hide the ‘math’ within other (more palatable) activities.
The concept of a Klein bottle takes some high level mathematical knowledge and understanding, as does the ability to be capable of knitting a representative pattern. I only know how to knit the most basic stitch pattern, I think it’s called a garter. As with the examples shown this week, it’s clear that someone who has a passion and talent for a particular art form and in-depth knowledge of mathematical concepts is who is able to convey both meaning and learning in this way.
Hi Malcolm,
ReplyDeleteYou brought forward an idea that I am often thinking about with my students. The idea being recognizing the mathematics in situations that might not look like traditional mathematics. As I teach early primary students I find that I have to do this very explicitly. For example once we do a task like using measurement in the garden, I talk to the students about how that task was math and how math doesn’t just happen in a classroom. I am challenging myself to take this further by having students highlight the math skills that is utilized in the task to help make connections.