A new series that has been initiated on YouTube is ‘Do you have a Mathematical Eye?’ The video series, as the name suggests, encourages viewers to understand the world around them through the lens of Mathematics. Dr Haneet Gandhi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, University of Delhi, encourages us to find mathematics in the routine and mundane.
Each episode picks up an object or activity from our everyday life and points towards the mathematics involved in the process. The range of topics stretches from sports (football to be specific), to tea bags, to cutting a cake, and the like.
The videos are well edited, the language is deliberately simple and the mathematics content is not technical. What this does is, to encourage people to develop an attitude of looking at the world differently. The videos make you realise the possibility of exploring mathematics around us rather than looking at it as an enigmatic discipline of numbers and symbols, that is decontextualised from the lives of the learners.
Teachers can start using these videos in primary school to encourage students to find meaning in the mathematics that they study in school. Making education more relevant by contextualising it to the lives and worlds of students. With technology providing varied stimuli, students may connect better through these videos than through lectures in the class.
Having said this, I found the videos as engaging as any student would. The brevity of the videos make for an easy and quick watch. I am sure adults would love it as much as school students.