Blog for this week 10/21/13

When was the last time you were assigned a research project? In what subject was it? What did you do? How did you feel about it? What did you think about it? Was it hard? Easy? Interesting? Boring? A burden? A joy? What was your project about? Did your teacher give you a choice of topics or was a topic assigned to you?

   The last time I was assigned a research project was Junior year in my trigonometry class. We had to research a man or women that had a large impact on math and the way it is conducted as of present day. It was sort of difficult for me to pick someone I was interested in who was also someone I felt did something significant concerning math and what I do in my day to day math classes. I actually thought after the fact that the topic was rather interesting. Looking up people who had such a large impact on my mathematical skills and how I problem solve was rather interesting. Having this research project left me with a lot of questions that pushed me to do my own voluntary research which I feel make my project that much better. 
    I feel now, a year later, that this project helped expand my knowledge on math and truly appreciate where the information and procedures stem from. Math has always been a subject that I enjoy and researching the topic though it seemed tedious when it was first done I truly enjoyed the project. The teacher did not give me a choice, I had to research about a person who had a large influence in math, however I did have my choice of the person I wanted to choice and why I felt that they were influential to me. 
    The person that I had picked in my research essay was Pythagoras who created the Pythagorean Theorem of a^2 = b^2 = c^2, he was born in Samos, Greece and was considered by many to be the father of numbers because of his belief that everything (even the gods and demons) could be explained through numbers. He lead a religious movement in which his followers were called Pythagoreans. The Pythagorean Theorem is always something that I remembered from math and was able to use rather easily once I learned it so finding information about the man who literally gave birth to the idea truly stuck with me. This research project truly impacted my life and my view of math overall.