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This fascinating study of mathematical thinking among sub-Saharan African peoples covers counting in words and in gestures; measuring time, distance, weight, and other quantities; manipulating money and keeping accounts; number systems; patterns in music, poetry, art, and architecture; and number magic and taboos. African games such as mankala and elaborate versions of tic-tac-toe show how complex this thinking can be. An invaluable resource for students, teachers, and others interested in African cultures and multiculturalism, this third edition is updated with an introduction covering two decades of new research in the ethnomathematics of Africa.
Study by a mathematical scholar on the ways in which African people count, keep time and records, play games, use geometry in art and architecture, etc. Based on research in Nigeria and East Africa.
This fascinating study of mathematical thinking among sub-Saharan African peoples covers counting in words and in gestures; measuring time, distance, weight, and other quantities; manipulating money and keeping accounts; number systems; patterns in music, poetry, art, and architecture; and number magic and taboos. African games such as mankala and elaborate versions of tic-tac-toe show how complex this thinking can be. An invaluable resource for students, teachers, and others interested in African cultures and multiculturalism, this third edition is updated with an introduction covering two decades of new research in the ethnomathematics of Africa.
This volume on ethnomathematics in Central Africa fills a gap in the current literature, focusing on a region rarely explored by other publications. It highlights the discovery of the Ishango rod, which was found to be the oldest mathematical tool in humanity's history, thereby shifting the origin of mathematics to the heart of Africa, and explores the different scientific hypotheses that emerged as a result. While it contains some high-level mathematics, the non-mathematical reader can easily skip these portions and enjoy the book’s survey of African history, culture, and art.
The series Tasks for Vegetation Science is devoted to a variety of research aspects in vegetation science, pure as wellas applied. Of the applied problems one of the most pressing is to achieve better knowledge and improvement of the pasture vegetation in tropical and subtropical regions. As series editor I was impressed by the sheer volume of useful scientific information concerning pasture plants from East Africa collected during many years by Dr. Boonman and compiled in one manuscript. Dr. Boonman first came to East Africa in 1963 on an overland journey along the river Nile which took him from Alexandria in Egypt to Lake Victoria in Uganda and Kenya and back again. After a brief spell as a cotton agronomist in the Sudan Gezira he joined the grassland research team at Kitale, Kenya in 1966. Improvement ofseed yield oftropical grasses was his principal interest which finally led him into the fieldof breeding grasses. Well-known varieties from his work include Boma & Elmba Rhodesgrass as wellas Clone 13Elephantgrass. In 1979he was recalled to The Netherlands to head a cooperative seedcompany involved in the breeding of grasses and cereals. The author has focused this study on one region, Eastern Africa.Global application of theories runs into conflicts too easily with local types of farming, if not with bare economics. Very few books can be found that describe existing practices and seek local answers by digging deep in the stacks of old, local reports.
The book includes papers on monographs and databases, on diversity of succulents, on various regions such as savannas, lowland rain forests and arid regions, on ecology and conservation, on generic delimitations in flowering plants, and on glacial forest refuges that influence the pattern of present-day floristic composition. Some reports on floral biology and the uses of African plants conclude these proceedings. The book is intended for readers in all disciplines of botany, vegetation science, forestry and nature management in Africa.
What do we know about economic development in Africa? The answer is that we know much less than we would like to think. This collection assesses the knowledge problem present in statistics on poverty, agriculture, labour, education, health, and economic growth. While diverse in origin, the contributors to this book are unified in two conclusions: the quality and quantity of data needs to be improved; and this is a concern not just for statisticians. Weaknesses in statistical methodology and practice can misinform policy makers, international agencies, donors, the private sector, and the citizens of African countries themselves. This is also a problem for academics from various disciplines, from history and economics to social epidemiology and education policy. Not only does academic work on Africa regularly use flawed data, but many problems encountered in surveys challenge common academic abstractions. By exploring these flaws, this book will provide a guide for scholars, policy makers, and all those using and commissioning surveys in Africa. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Development Studies.
The Encyclopaedia fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural stud ies. Reference works on other cultures tend either to omit science completely or pay little attention to it, and those on the history of science almost always start with the Greeks, with perhaps a mention of the Islamic world as a trans lator of Greek scientific works. The purpose of the Encyclopaedia is to bring together knowledge of many disparate fields in one place and to legitimize the study of other cultures' science. Our aim is not to claim the superiority of other cultures, but to engage in a mutual exchange of ideas. The Western aca demic divisions of science, technology, and medicine have been united in the Encyclopaedia because in ancient cultures these disciplines were connected. This work contributes to redressing the balance in the number of reference works devoted to the study of Western science, and encourages awareness of cultural diversity. The Encyclopaedia is the first compilation of this sort, and it is testimony both to the earlier Eurocentric view of academia as well as to the widened vision of today. There is nothing that crosses disciplinary and geographic boundaries, dealing with both scientific and philosophical issues, to the extent that this work does. xi PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Many years ago I taught African history at a secondary school in Central Africa.