Mathematics

Calculus

This assignment: A Prelude to Calculus – History and Pedagogy was part of my Masters of Teaching. It was a way of introducing students to the concept of a limit based on an historical account of the way the ancient Greeks reasoned about the concept in order to derive equations for the volumes of a sphere, cone, and cylinder. This occurred long before the development of calculus, and even of algebra. Central to the solution was a focus on Archimedes’ Method of Equilibrium so that the idea of limits […]