Math Art Project Reflection

Initially, when the course outline was given to me, I was a little confused at the prospect of a math art project. I admit that it didn't appeal much to me at first. However, after completing the project and making connections to math concepts applicable in a high school context, it made me appreciate the intercurricular activity a lot more. I never really had an interest in art, but seeing mathematics visualized in an aesthetically-pleasing manner piqued my interest!

As for the project itself, my group ultimately decided on Margaret Kepner's piece from the Bridges 2019 gallery. She provides two different interpretations of the same concept: sequences signified by colour, one on a square grid, and the other on a triangular grid. After the first day discussing with my group members, I made a suggestion that we recreate the piece using LaTeX, as I was striving for the most authentic replica. During my trial-and-error of programming, I came to the conclusion that the triangular grid was the easiest to implement, and so we focused our efforts on that picture. The programming went relatively smoothly, only hitting a few hurdles like colours and triangles overlapping.

As for our own interpretation, my group members came up with the idea of using both lucky numbers and perfect squares. We also agreed on changing Fibbonacci numbers to be represented by white dots in the geometric centre of the triangle, for better clarity. The idea to idea to use perfect squares was a hidden gem. It revealed a pattern alike to the one produced by the triangular numbers in the original. However, there was a very interesting difference: it consisted of only five arms, compared to the seven of the aforementioned.

This activity was great in relevance to the curriculum as it dealt with different sets of numbers. Students learn about these sets but may not directly see the connection between them. Being able to visualize in mathematics is very important, as some students are not able to fully understand using traditional methods.

Looking back at the presentation, the implementation of the in-class activity could have been handled better. Unfortunately, with the grand scale of the project, it was difficult for the class to draw their own with the limit of 96 triangles. With time in mind, this is really the largest we could reasonably have, but the drawback was that the pattern was hard to see for some of the arms, and it did not come into fruition as much as we hoped. All said and done, I am elated at the finished product, and glad me and my group members were able to display sequences in visual patterns to the rest of the class, and hopefully more of the same is in store for my future students.