This web site is based on a Math 198A course taught in Spring 2000 by Harold M. Hastings . Nelcida Armand and Kara Benton participated in this course and found topics for the web site. The course was partially supported by two grant to Hofstra University: A grant from the National Science Foundation directed by Prof. Hastings and a grant from the Department of Education directed by Prof. Cheryl Mwaria.

Mathematics of the African Diaspora (Scott Williams, SUNY-Buffalo, wrote this site)

Mondrian's fractal drawing

Eglash wrote our text - here is his home page

History of Mathematics (web site at St. Andrews University)

Current news about Africa, on-line news in Swahili

Syllabus from the Spring 2000 course

Texts:

Ron Eglash, African Fractals (available in bookstore)

Donald Benson, Marching to a Different Drummer (review copy, Oxford Univ. Press, used with permission of OUP), chapters on Egyptian mathematics

H.M. Hastings and G. Sugihara, Fractals: a user's guide for the natural sciences, Oxford University Press, 1993 (Selections, for the basic definitions of fractals)

M.D. McGuire, An eye for fractals: a graphic & photographic essay, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, Calif., 1991. (Fractal patterns in nature, basic definitions, iteration. An especially clear description of fractal dimension).

J.R. Newman, The World of Mathematics, Simon and Shuster, NY, 1956 (library has copies), pp 169-180.

Web sites:

www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/mad.html (Mathematics of the African Diaspora)

www.moma.org/collection/paintsculpt/mondrian.broadway.html (Mondrian's fractal drawing, to compare with African fractals)

www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.htm (Eglash's home page)

www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk (for history of mathematics)

Topics:

Overview of history of African mathematics
Fractals in African mathematics and design
Self-similarity and iteration
Fractal geometry
Why fractals might have originated in Africa and not in other regions ?
Fractals in tribal African architecture
Fractals in art (compare with Mondrian)
Egyptian mathematics
Basic algorithms
	Multiplication and division as iterative processes
		Recursion
		Efficiency
	Comparison with iteration in African fractals
	Comparison with modern binary arithmetic
	Egyptian approach to fractions
		use of unit fractions
		advantages and disadvantages
African mathematicians today

This course was taught as a tutorial. Students wrote two papers, one on African Fractals and one on Egyptian Mathematics. Students also began work on a web site for the course.

This course should be offered in alternate years, with the syllabus expanded to include mathematics from the Middle East. It might lead to a "cross-cultural" course in mathematics and the sciences.

Return to Prof. Hastings's home page.