Math walk

A math walk, or math trail, is a type of themed walk in the US, where direct experience is translated into the language of mathematics or abstract mathematical sciences such as information science, computer science, decision science, or probability and statistics. Some sources specify how to create a math walk whereas others define a math walk at a specific location such as a junior high school or in Boston. The journal The Mathematics Teacher includes a special section titled "Mathematical Lens" in many issues with the metaphor of lens capturing seeing the world as mathematics.

A math walk, or math trail, is a type of themed walk in the US, where direct experience is translated into the language of mathematics or abstract mathematical sciences such as information science, computer science, decision science, or probability and statistics. Some sources specify how to create a math walk whereas others define a math walk at a specific location such as a junior high school or in Boston. The journal The Mathematics Teacher includes a special section titled "Mathematical Lens" in many issues with the metaphor of lens capturing seeing the world as mathematics. A walk can involve translation only, or translation and problem solving. For example, considering a window on a building involves first perceiving the window. After perception, there is a translation of the form of the window to mathematical language, such as the array (w,l) where w is the window's width and l is the window's length. The array (w,l) is a mathematical model of the window. This modeling is pure translation, without explicit problem solving. Questions such as "what is the area of the window?" require not only translation, but also the problem of solving for area: a = l \times w . . A photo of the railroad tracks in Fernandina Beach Historic District captures a stop on a math walk. The walk's information can focus on discrete items. These items reflect counting and number sense. Examples of discrete items are the cloud structures, the distant red harbor cranes, power line poles, wooden railroad ties, the diagonal lines in the road, and the cross walk across the rails. The counting of the ties leads to the idea of iteration in computer programming and, more generally, to discrete mathematics, the core of computer science. For iteration, we can use a programming language such as Python or C to encode the syntactical form of the iteration for a computer program. Other computer science related topics include a labeled directed graph that defines a semantic network. Such a network captures the objects in the photo as well as the relations among those objects. The semantic network is generally represented by a diagram with circles (concepts) and arrows (directed relations). There are additional indirect mathematical relations, including a differential equation that would define the motion of the train engine, with time as an independent variable. Finding Computing in Everyday Objects (TedX talk) Charles River Conservancy Math Trails Maths in the City MathCityMap Math Talk Math Trail at City Hall

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