The Radius of the Circle is San

During the Edo period, Japan was almost completely gated away for many centuries. During that time, Europe was developing math like never-before. You may be wondering, did Japan not have any math then? No math homework to give to unfortunate students? The answer is: Japan developed their own style of math. Today we learned about the history and development of math in Japan from Dr. David Clark, a professor of math at Randolph-Macon College. We saw old problems carved into wood and heard about the samurai’s change in career to math. We even got to solve two traditional Japanese math problems. If there’s one thing we’ll say about math, it’s the fact that European, American, or Japanese, they’re all hard. 

Today we also carved out our designs into woodblocks. If anyone ever told you that carving is easy, they were lying. This was only part two of the woodblock process, so stay tuned for the final product!