A professor of the University of Granada (Spain) has compiled about 4,000 graphic jokes by more than 700 humorists from all over the world related to Mathematics and its teaching, an equipment he uses during his lessons of Didactics of Mathematics in the Faculty of Sciences of Education.
Pablo Flores Martínez has devoted more than 14 years to compile jokes, comics and cartoons with Mathematics as a common resource. To that end, he consults every day the section of graphic humor of more than 20 newspapers, besides several specialized web pages which compile jokes from all over the world. “I enter them whenever I can and I select the most interesting ones”, explains the UGR professor.
In order to carry out his collection, Flores Martínez considers to be mathematic jokes only those which comply with any of the following conditions:
– Including the word “Mathematics” or derived
– Using terms identified with Mathematics, such as numbers, geometric figures usual in Mathematics, graphic representations or mathematical signs
– Presenting situations which can be mathematically solved
– Dealing with Mathematics teaching
Raising a specific situation
During his lessons, the professor of the University of Granada uses these jokes to “raise a specific related to Mathematics” and explain it to his students. Flores Martínez has prepared a database where he has classified his cartoons in different categories: numbers, geometry, algebra, operations, measure, analysis, statistics, proportion and functions.
Part of his collection has been compiled in the book “Graphic humor in the classroom of Mathematics”, and will be object of study in another work which is about to be published.
The professor of Didactics of Mathematics invites anyone who finds a cartoon related to Mathematics to send it by email to: pflores@ugr.es
See photograph attached of one of the cartoons of the researcher’s collection.
Reference
Pablo Flores Martínez
Department of Didactics of Mathematics. University of Granada
Tel. 958 242845 | E-mail pflores@ugr.es
Web http://www.ugr.es/~pflores/
