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Higher Math Thinking is Linked to Crocheting

I wanted my child to learn what seems like the lost art of sewing. It is such a practical skill and yet it’s not passed down enough because of our hurried lifestyles. So, a friend loaned me her book called Stitches and Pins: A Beginning Sewing Book for Girls.

I give it a thumbs up.  It’s a great intro book for anyone who wants to learn sewing or wants to teach his or her child to sew.  It has easy to follow instructions from the very basic to the more complicated and includes patterns with it.

Of course that then reminded me of a time when I use to crochet with my grandmother and discovered that crocheting could lead to higher math thinking.

Science writer Margaret Wertheim and her sister not only started a crochet coral reef project that has been getting world wide acclaim and has had many participants, but it turns out was also perfectly adapted to model hyperbolic space.

Hyperbolic space is the result of a unique form of geometry called hyperbolic geometry where one of the qualities of hyperbolic space is that as you move away from a point, the space around it expands exponentially much like increasing the number of stitches in each row.

Anyway, crochet offers the best way to physically model hyperbolic space allowing us to feel and explore the properties of this unique geometry.  Today, models like the coral reef project not only allow us to see these complex equations in physical space, but their crocheting is actually helping mathematicians see patterns and make breakthroughs.

Want to crochet your own hyperbolic shapes? Check out Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes a book recommended by one of my readers. Thank you Leslie.