Math History Research Project

Students learn all kinds of facts about the American Revolution, Ancient Egypt, and World War II, but what do they learn about the history of math?

Did you know that before the negative sign was invented, the ancient Chinese wrote positive values in black ink and negative values in red ink? Or that the 7th century Indian mathematician Brahmagupta had a list of rules about "debts" and "fortunes" that we now teach to our students in a unit about integers?

Imagine what else your students will learn about the origins of mathematics as they complete this 2-part research project that asks them to choose a math topic such as integers, fractions, geometry, number systems, etc, conduct research online, and create a Power Point presentation and a timeline to detail their findings. This works great as a week-long end-of-year project, or it can be spread out over several weeks with less interruption to your daily schedule.

When students submit their projects you can vary the normal individual presentation routine by having students who researched the same topic form a group and share their findings. Just give them 5 minutes to write down as many things as they can about the history of their topic on a piece of poster paper, and then present to the class as a group.

A rubric is included in this product for easy and fair grading.