News Math

Non-Western art and design can reveal alternate ways of thinking about math

Modern math has mostly Western origins, so ideas from other cultures are often missing

A photo of a variety of different colored textiles with adinkras, used in Ghana's Twi language to express proverbs, stamped in black ink.

Speakers of Ghana’s Twi language use symbols, or adinkras, to express proverbs. Those adinkras are often stamped on textiles, such as those shown here. Adinkras provide clues to how Twi speakers think about math, researchers say.

Ron Eglash

By Sujata Gupta

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