A study of ethnomatematics on Tulungagung marble craft

Abstract

Mathematics has become a compulsory subject that is widely taught in every educational level, and generally the concept of mathematics as a subject is only taught formally without being matched to everydays’ life in the environment or society. The concept of mathematics in fact is tightly related to everydays’ life. Not only in terms of daily life activities, the concept of mathematics without being consciously realized is related to the culture of a society as well. Mathematical aspects and concepts in relation to culture are known as what is called Ethnomatematics. The current study aims at examining and investigating the ethnomatematics on ornament patterns on Tulungagung marble crafts. Themethod employed by this research is qualitative explorative. Data is collected from the observation method, interviews, and documentation from informants who are experts on the subject; among them are mathematics teachers and lecturers, community leaders, and marble artists. Ethnomatematics is a branch of mathematics that focuses on studying the way mathematics is perceived within a cultural perspective. Therefore,it is obvious that mathematics has its correlation to culture and used in daily life activities by people in a society. The results of this study found that Tulungagung marbles, especially the ornament patterns, contain elements of mathematics. Some elements in the patterns are geometrical, making them a culturally meaningful pattern that was created through geometric and symmetrical transformation. Geometry transformation includes translation, reflection, rotation, and dilation.