The aphorism signifies cooperation and interdependence. And like many Twi expressions, it can be communicated with a symbol, or adinkra. This adinkra has two triangular halves that are almost, but not quite, symmetrical. One triangle has a circle sitting atop it and is missing a square from its interior, while the other triangle has a square attached to it and is missing a circle. Each half completes the other.
“It is useful to think of mathematics as a language,” says physicist Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon in Eugene. Some words and concepts will overlap across cultures but look different, while others will remain unique. Adinkras — symbols for Twi proverbs — link math and meaning. The not-quite-symmetric adinkra “Boa me na me mmoa wo” conveys cooperation and interdependence, where trades are mutually beneficial though unequal. The Atoma Ntosa, or linked hearts, adinkra uses rotational symmetry to communicate that in any relationship, all partners should play their part..
In Eglash’s Ghana study, nine students in one class used the adinkra model to learn about log spirals while 10 students in another class learned the concept through conventional models. On a test of the material, the adinkra students, with an average test score of 45 percent, than the other students, who scored 14 percent on average, Eglash and colleagues reported in 2015 in theThe experiment needs scaling up, but the team’s casual observations were striking.
Math education should give students both a window to a new world and a mirror reflecting their own world, says Rochelle Guttiérez, a mathematics education researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in any of the research. “Too many times in math classrooms, people just look out and see lots of windows. They never get mirrors.” These tools provide that mirror, she says.