ABSTRACT
The presence of recreational problems in mathematics texts seems to be as old as the discipline itself. In fact, some of the problems from the Rhind Papyrus are usually interpreted in such a way (Robins & Shute, 1987). It is widely acknowledged that recreational mathematics can be useful in education in several ways (Rowlett et al., 2019). This idea has already been exploited beyond the formal educational contexts during the 18th in Spain, where it was sometimes possible to find mathematical problems in daily journals that fostered interesting interactions between different readers (Madrid et al., 2023; Oller-Marcén, 2023). This was not a local phenomenon. In the US, for instance, Zelbo (2019) has studied the recreational mathematics columns of two American newspapers from the end of the 19th century. In this paper, we want to present a first exploratory approach to the analysis of the presence of mathematics in the Spanish weekly magazine Alrededor del Mundo [Around the World], which was published between 1899 and 1930. This magazine was one of the relatively numerous non-daily variety publications that emerged in Spain at the end of the 19th century (Seoane & Sáiz, 1996). In its pages we find works of scientific dissemination, question and answer sections, travel articles, letters to the editor, etc. The last pages were always dedicated to a fixed section called “Recetas y recreos” [Recipes and recreations], which contained medicinal and gastronomic recipes, chess problems, and also riddles and enigmas that, on many occasions, were of mathematical content. This research aims to identify and analyze the presence of mathematics not only in this “Recetas y recreos” section, but also in the rest of the magazine. Our work illustrates the interest of studying the presence of mathematics in non-formal contexts and environments, and it places this Spanish particular case in what seems to have been a wider international trend.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Robins, G. & Shute, C. (1987). The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. An ancient Egyptian Text. British Museum Publications.
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Zelbo, S. (2019). The recreational mathematics activities of ordinary nineteenth century Americans: A case study of two mathematics puzzle columns and their contributors. British Journal for the History of Mathematics, 34(3), pp. 155–178.