Nov.6 reading responsee

One thing that struck me was how Eurocentrism in the history of mathematics continues to be reinforced even today. This brought to mind my middle school math teacher, who lamented the fact that the globally accepted origin of the Pythagorean theorem was primarily attributed to the West, while he believed it originated in China. Ancient Chinese texts refer to it as the *gou-gu* theorem, discovered by a teacher named Chen Zi and his student Rong Fang, although they were not widely acknowledged historically. Because non-European contributions have often been marginalized in the history of mathematics, potentially due to lost records or the failure to credit early math innovators, it is more important to educate students on the importance of math contributions from other cultures. Another aspect that surprised me was how non-European mathematical contributions continue to be overlooked in modern education systems. This remains true in current school curricula. For example, when I learned about Pascal’s triangle in high school, it was taught as a European discovery. Yet, mathematicians like the Chinese scholar Yang Hui made significant earlier contributions to this concept. Despite this, we never explored the diverse historical background of the triangle, leaving us with the impression that it had a singular European origin.