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WOMEN, ART AND GEOMETRY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA by Paulus Gerdes
Africa World Press, Inc. 1998, 244 pp.
Paulus Gerdes is one of the major figures in the fields of ethnomathematics and cross-cultural mathematics education. Gerdes has spent over 15 years studying and writing about the indigenous mathematical ideas of Africa. Women, Art and Geometry in Southern Africa is a wonderful survey of geometrical properties of art executed in various media by women in southern Africa. Gerdes' objective (and one of the objectives of ethnomathematics) is to uncover possibilities for improving mathematics education by situating the mathematics in the cultural context of the student. This situated mathematics, it is hoped, will lay a foundation for an appreciation and comprehension of science and mathematics. Gerdes believes that mathematics education in southern Africa may be...