Diagrams and Gestures

Diagrams and Gestures
Author: Francesco La Mantia
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2023-09-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3031291115

Drawing a line, and then another, and another. Go back from the lines to the movements they capture and see gestures in them: not spatial displacements, but modes of knowledge that pass through the exercise of the body. Discovering something new in a gesture: the line that contracts into a point or the point that expands into a zone, perhaps sinking into a hole. Thus experiencing a diagram: a becoming other inscribed in the novelty of the gesture and in the changes of the forms it shapes. This and much more is discussed in the essays gathered in Diagrams and Gestures. Resulting from trans-disciplinary work between mathematicians, philosophers, linguists and semioticians, the volume delivers an up-to-date account of the most valuable research on the connections between gesture and diagram. As one of the most important themes in contemporary thought, the study of these connections poses a challenge for the future: to elaborate a theory that is equal to new and stimulating research methodologies. We call this theory a philosophy of diagrammatic gestures.

Mathematics and the Body

Mathematics and the Body
Author: Elizabeth de Freitas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2014-06-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1107039487

This book expands the landscape of research in mathematics education by analyzing how the body influences mathematical thinking.

Mathematical Teaching and Learning

Mathematical Teaching and Learning
Author: Katherine M. Robinson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2023-06-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 303131848X

This book focusses on teaching and learning in elementary and middle school mathematics and suggests practices for teachers to help children be successful mathematical thinkers. Contributions from diverse theoretical and disciplinary perspectives are explored. Topics include the roles of technology, language, and classroom discussion in mathematics learning, the use of creativity, visuals, and teachers’ physical gestures to enhance problem solving, inclusive educational activities to promote children’s mathematics understanding, how learning in the home can enhance children’s mathematical skills, the application of mathematics learning theories in designing effective teaching tools, and a discussion of how students, teachers, teacher educators, and school boards differentially approach elementary and middle school mathematics. This book and its companion, Mathematical Cognition and Understanding, take an interdisciplinary perspective to mathematical learning and development in the elementary and middle school years. The authors and perspectives in this book draw from education, neuroscience, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology. The book will be relevant to scholars/educators in the field of mathematics education and also those in childhood development and cognition. Each chapter also includes practical tips and implications for parents as well as for educators and researchers.

Contemporary Research and Perspectives on Early Childhood Mathematics Education

Contemporary Research and Perspectives on Early Childhood Mathematics Education
Author: Iliada Elia
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2018-02-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3319734326

This book brings together a collection of research-based papers on current issues in early childhood mathematics education that were presented in the Topic Study Group 1 (TSG 1) at the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13), held at the University of Hamburg in 2016. It will help readers understand a range of key issues that early childhood mathematics educators encounter today. Research on early childhood mathematics education has grown in recent years, due in part to the well-documented, positive relation between children’s early mathematical knowledge and their later mathematics learning, and to the considerable emphasis many countries are now placing on preschool education. The book addresses a number of central questions, including: What is mathematical structural development and how can we promote it in early childhood? How can multimodality and embodiment contribute to early mathematics learning and to acquiring a better understanding of young children’s mathematical development? How can children’s informal mathematics-related experiences affect instruction and children’s learning in different mathematics content areas? What is the role of tools, including technology and picture books, in supporting early mathematics learning? What are the challenges in early childhood mathematics education for teachers’ education and professional development?

Spatial Language and Dialogue

Spatial Language and Dialogue
Author: Kenny R. Coventry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2009-04-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 019955420X

This book considers how people talk about the location of objects and places. The book reports on the latest developments in the field of spatial language and sets an agenda for future research on spatial conceptualization and communication in cognitive science, computer science, psychology, and linguistics.

Gestures Can Create Models that Help Thinking

Gestures Can Create Models that Help Thinking
Author: Yang Liu
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

For information that is not inherently spatial, participants use representational gestures to facilitate the visualization. For instance, a temporal schedule can be visualized into a two-dimension table. For linear order text, people create a list of items that are organized by a certain order. When the spatial and not inherently spatial models are presented in maps or diagrams, representational gestures were still observed and beneficial for the memory test. Due to the limited sample size and other limitations of the lab setting experiment, these studies did not provide strong results that support the hypotheses that gestures help people comprehend and memorize information. Gestures were found beneficial for only one type of stimuli (mechanical systems) and an overall effect on memory test scores across text and diagram stimuli. Even though the effect of gestures was not significant between different types and formats of stimuli, it was in the right direction. Future research with more sensitive measurements could further explore gestures for thinking.

The Topos of Music

The Topos of Music
Author: Guerino Mazzola
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Total Pages: 1310
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 303488141X

With contributions by numerous experts

When Form Becomes Substance

When Form Becomes Substance
Author: Luciano Boi
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-12-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9783030831240

This interdisciplinary volume collects contributions from experts in their respective fields with as common theme diagrams. Diagrams play a fundamental role in the mathematical visualization and philosophical analysis of forms in space. Some of the most interesting and profound recent developments in contemporary sciences, whether in topology, geometry, dynamic systems theory, quantum field theory or string theory, have been made possible by the introduction of new types of diagrams, which, in addition to their essential role in the discovery of new classes of spaces and phenomena, have contributed to enriching and clarifying the meaning of the operations, structures and properties that are at the heart of these spaces and phenomena. The volume gives a closer look at the scope and the nature of diagrams as constituents of mathematical and physical thought, their function in contemporary artistic work, and appraise, in particular, the actual importance of the diagrams of knots, of braids, of fields, of interaction, of strings in topology and geometry, in quantum physics and in cosmology, but also in theory of perception, in plastic arts and in philosophy. The editors carefully curated this volume to be an inspiration to students and researchers in philosophy, phenomenology, mathematics and the sciences, as well as artists, musicians and the general interested audience.

Elements of Meaning in Gesture

Elements of Meaning in Gesture
Author: Geneviève Calbris
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027228477

Summarizing her pioneering work on the semiotic analysis of gestures in conversational settings, Geneviève Calbris offers a comprehensive account of her unique perspective on the relationship between gesture, speech, and thought. She highlights the various functions of gesture and especially shows how various gestural signs can be created in the same gesture by analogical links between physical and semantic elements. Originating in our world experience via mimetic and metonymic processes, these analogical links are activated by contexts of use and thus lead to a diverse range of semantic constructions rather as, from the components of a Meccano kit, many different objects can be assembled. By (re)presenting perceptual schemata that mediate between the concrete and the abstract, gesture may frequently anticipate verbal formulation. Arguing for gesture as a symbolic system in its own right that interfaces with thought and speech production, Calbris' book brings a challenging new perspective to gesture studies and will be seminal for generations of gesture researchers.

Knotted Surfaces and Their Diagrams

Knotted Surfaces and Their Diagrams
Author: J. Scott Carter
Publisher: American Mathematical Society
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1470476339

In this book the authors develop the theory of knotted surfaces in analogy with the classical case of knotted curves in 3-dimensional space. In the first chapter knotted surface diagrams are defined and exemplified; these are generic surfaces in 3-space with crossing information given. The diagrams are further enhanced to give alternative descriptions. A knotted surface can be described as a movie, as a kind of labeled planar graph, or as a sequence of words in which successive words are related by grammatical changes. In the second chapter, the theory of Reidemeister moves is developed in the various contexts. The authors show how to unknot intricate examples using these moves. The third chapter reviews the braid theory of knotted surfaces. Examples of the Alexander isotopy are given, and the braid movie moves are presented. In the fourth chapter, properties of the projections of knotted surfaces are studied. Oriented surfaces in 4-space are shown to have planar projections without cusps and without branch points. Signs of triple points are studied. Applications of triple-point smoothing that include proofs of triple-point formulas and a proof of Whitney's congruence on normal Euler classes are presented. The fifth chapter indicates how to obtain presentations for the fundamental group and the Alexander modules. Key examples are worked in detail. The Seifert algorithm for knotted surfaces is presented and exemplified. The sixth chapter relates knotted surfaces and diagrammatic techniques to 2-categories. Solutions to the Zamolodchikov equations that are diagrammatically obtained are presented. The book contains over 200 illustrations that illuminate the text. Examples are worked out in detail, and readers have the opportunity to learn first-hand a series of remarkable geometric techniques.