Geometry, Gossip and Gauss: Maths Stories That Stick - Himani Kumar
You know you’re truly passionate about maths education when you wake up early – yes, 10am is early during the holidays - to attend a webinar on storytelling in mathematics teaching. I recently had the pleasure of joining such a session led by Ioanna Georgiou, a mathematics educator and author, and it left me inspired about the power of stories in the classroom.
Why Storytelling Matters
Storytelling can function as a powerful tool in teaching, even more in unconventional subjects like maths, where it is seldom used. When done well, it can transform abstract concepts that may be difficult to grasp, into memorable experiences. A story can spark curiosity and foster deeper understanding, whilst teaching complex mathematical theories that may have been closed off to a wider pool of students. After this webinar, I’m more convinced than ever, that weaving stories into lessons where relevant is not only important, but vital.
The Gauss Story: A Personal Favourite
One story that has stuck with me through the years is that of Carl Friedrich Gauss and the sum of numbers. For readers who may not know it: as a young child, Gauss’s teacher asked the class to add all the numbers from 1 to 100, expecting it to take a while. Gauss, however, quickly wrote down the answer of 5,050. He’d noticed a pattern: pairing the first and last numbers (1 + 100), the second and second-to-last (2 + 99), and so on, each pair sums to 101. With 50 such pairs, he simply calculated 50 × 101 = 5,050.
The story and method are both so profound, that I’ve never had to “memorise” the formula for the sum of the first natural numbers; it just makes sense. The narrative didn’t just help me remember, it encouraged me to think critically and appreciate the elegance of this way of thinking. The idea that you can find the sum of the first, say, 2,979 numbers with pen and paper, thanks to a simple observation, is astonishing.
Stories from the Webinar
During the webinar, Ioanna shared many unique and sometimes peculiar stories about mathematicians, often focusing on the dramatic circumstances of their lives and deaths. My favourite was the story of Hypatia, the renowned mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher of ancient Alexandria. Her short time on Earth saw her contribute to the development of astronomy but also pass on her teaching to others. She also aided the construction of astrolabes (ancient instruments used to calculate the position of stars and planets). But such were the times, that even such a status could not keep her safe from persecution and she was murdered for political and religious reasons. Her fate sealed, yet her mind lives on through the ages, in maths. Her story is a powerful reminder of the challenges faced by scholars in history, even when they served such an important role in society.
We also heard about Hippasus, a Greek philosopher and mathematician from the 5th century BCE. As a member of the secretive Pythagorean school, he discovered the existence of irrational numbers, specifically, that the square root of 2 cannot be written as a ratio of two whole numbers. This revelation, known as the crisis of incommensurable magnitudes, shook the foundations of the Pythagorean belief that all things could be explained by integers and their ratios. It is said that Hippasus was drowned at sea by his peers for revealing or claiming this discovery. Hearing this, I couldn’t help but think: was it really that serious? For me, the story highlights how threatened people can feel when their worldview is challenged and makes me wonder what else could have been discovered if knowledge-sharing had been encouraged rather than punished…
What This Means for My Teaching
Stories like these do more than entertain. They remind us that mathematicians were real people, living in times very different from our own. Their discoveries, struggles, and even their deaths make the subject feel less arbitrary and much more human. When students hear these stories, they can start to appreciate mathematics not just as a set of rules, but as a real, evolving field shaped by people who underwent great struggles to tell the world what they had discovered – ideas we now take for granted.
When I think back to times I’ve been truly engaged in a conversation or a lesson, it’s often because the speaker was a great storyteller. Storytelling has the potential to transform how students experience maths, and I’m eager to put this into practice.
By Himani Kumar
www.linkedin.com/in/himani-kumar
Image supplied by the author.
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