NumberLine.html

This tutorial introduces the series of games. Players put fractions and decimals into the correct order.

Reflection Question: What mathematics did you see in the game that you might use in your life?

jiimaan.html

This game starts a series of games where you are playing as a member of the Mi'kmaq nation in the late 1500s. For some background on the Mi'kmaq, see here. And here's a good article on telling time without a clock.

Reflection Question: Tell us which items you collected and who you thought had the best advice.

ozhichigan.html

This game has players schedule the multiple tasks needed to build a jiimaan, a birch-bark canoe For some background on the Mi'kmaq, I recommend watching this video. from Canada or this one from Minnesota documenting jiimaan building.

Reflection Question: describe what were the most difficult choices to make.

boosenech.html

This game has players informally build a map, a weighted graph, to find the quickest route for their canoe from one side of the Gaspé peninsula to the other.

Reflection Question: Describe how you think indigenous people used maps to navigate their world. Were they written down, in symbolic form, passed on orally, or what?

salpolguj.html

I made this game after reflecting on these accounts:
A Jesuit missionary, Hierosme Lallemant, marveled in 1659 that "it is wonderful how these Savage mariners navigate so far in little shallops, crossing vast seas without compass, and often without sight of the sun, trusting to instinct for their guidance". In 1744, the Jesuit historian, Father Pierre-Francois-Xavier de Charlevoix, related that "they do not hesitate to paddle their bark canoes thirty or forty miles by sea". A British army officer expressed admiration for "the Indians about Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence [who] have frequently passed over to Labrador, which is thirty to forty leagues, without a compass, and have landed at the very spot they first intended". An English naval officer, Edward Chappell, subsequently envisioned how, after having been granted a tract of land in Newfoundland, a group of Mi'kmaq from Cape Breton Island ventured forth, and "boldly launched out to sea in their own crazy shallops or canoes, they eventually reached St. George's Bay in safety ... without compass or chart, they are not perplexed in traversing the most boisterous seas".

Reflection Question: In what way did Mi'kmaw navigators use science or math to find their way at sea?

lapugwan.html

This game has the players take a sea voyage to France. They try to learn from others on board and answer the captain's probing questions.

Reflection Questions: Why would an indigenous person travel to Europe in the sixteenth century? Why did some sailing ships have math tutors on board?
[see: article ]

cipher.html

In France, the players learn mathematics, directly from mathematicians like François Viète. They will use their skills in cryptography to prove they can be diplomats.

Reflection Question: write several sentences on what role you think literacy plays in colonization and decolonization.

mc1.html

Mexico City was at the arch-stone of the Spanish Empire, connecting Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Players will decide who to talk to, looking for details on the Chinese origins of a polynomial evaluation method (later known as Horner's Method).

Reflection Question: explain this method with an example of finding solutions to a polynomial like 2x³ - 3x² - 11x + 6 = 0

mc2.html

Katherine Jones writes your group a letter, asking about Arithmetica Infinitorum , by John Wallis.

Reflection Questions: What is potential infinity versus actual infinity? Why did Aristotle argue against actual infinity? Why has infinity been a theological controversy?

mc3.html

Galileo performed an experiment with a metal ball rolling down an inclined plane. He saw that the distance the ball traveled as it accelerated was in a sequence of 1, 3, 5, 7, ... over equal times.

Reflection Questions: If each second the ball travels in an odd numbered sequence, does that always add up to a square number? And can we calculate the instantaneous velocity of the ball at say 2 seconds or 5 seconds after release?

mc4.html

The astronomer Cassini challenges you to make a reflecting telescope, like Newton's.

Reflection Questions: Find 3 points on a parabola and show how vertical rays reflect and go through the focus. Perhaps calculate the hours and minutes Mexico City is west of Paris.

mc5.html

The Electress Sophie, Princess of Palatinate debates with Leibniz on the nature of minds and his theory of universal symbols.

Reflection Questions: Can you estimate the height of the largest pyramid in Teotihuacan? And can you give your opinion on any possible connection between the Egyptians who built their pyramids and the nations that built the pyramids in Mexico?