The Webinar on Introduction to Ethnomathematics took place on Saturday, June 3rd, 2023 from 2 pm until 3 pm, with Dr. Ximena Catepillan, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, as our invited speaker. This virtual event was free and open to the general public.
The invited speaker explained that ethnomathematics is the connection between culture, history and mathematics. Dr. Ximena Catepillan showed different representations of number systems all over the world: additive (for example: Egyptian and Aztec), alphabetical (for example: Greek), multiplicative (for example: Ancient Chinese) and positional (for example: Hindu-Arabic). The speaker then described number systems of different bases, such as: the binary sistem, the quinary system of Brazil and the Mayan vigesimal system. Dr. Ximena Catepillan also defined dactylonomy as the technique of counting with your fingers and analyzed how people from different countries count from 1 to 5 using only one hand.
