W. W. Rouse Ball and the mathematics of string figures

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2014.06.003MaRDI QIDQ465159zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Eric Vandendriessche

Publication date 31 October 2014

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2014.06.003

zbMATH Keywords

ethnomathematicsrecreational mathematicsstring figureW. W. Rouse Ball

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Recreational mathematics (00A08) Ethnomathematics (general) (01A07) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60)

Review text

In its fifth (1911) through ninth (1920) editions, W. W. Rouse Ball's \textit{Mathematical recreations and essays} devoted a chapter to string manipulations such as cat's cradle. He dropped this chapter from the book subsequent to the publication of his short monograph on the topic. The present article argues that while the chapter did not provide an explicit mathematical analysis, its treatment was implicitly mathematical. In particular, rather than organizing the material on an anthropological basis, as had been done by previous writers on the subject, Ball grouped together presentations of string figures based on their structures and the procedures that generated them.

Recommendations

• String figures: a mathematical activity in some traditional societies
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 51548
• Knot diagrams on a punctured sphere as a model of string figures
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 863105
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1072009

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1817586 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3153104 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1549039 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3045770 (Why is no real title available?)
• String figures: a mathematical activity in some traditional societies
• Vector Solutions of Geometric Problems and Their Generalizations

Cited in

(1)

• String figures: a mathematical activity in some traditional societies

This page was built for publication: W. W. Rouse Ball and the mathematics of string figures

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q465159)