This is a page where I can broaden the context of a discussion and offer motivated students advanced material.
If I'm teaching an algebra course, for example, someone might want to learn about famous women mathematicians. Or maybe I'm
teaching English this term and my students are curious about Shakespeare's life or Elizabethan England. I will use this page
to give students what they're looking for by going into depth about my subject.
Here's an example of the type of material
I could include:
There is evidence to suggest that African Mathematics began more than 8000 years ago. A carved bone dating from between 9000
BC and 6500 BC was found at Ishango in Zaire. The markings indicate that these prehistoric people used a base-10 number system
(just like we do) and were familiar with prime numbers and the operation of multiplying by 2. A series of notches on the Ishango
bone appear to approximate a lunar calendar, suggesting a fairly sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.