Apolonio, Descartes y Steiner en un apretado envase de palmitos

En este trabajo se intenta mostrar las potencialidades de la geometría de lo cotidiano para el desarrollo de proyectos educativos. Se examinan algunas experiencias reportadas en la literatura (Balbuena, 2000; Alsina, 2005; Romero y Castro, 2008). Luego se hace un recuento de las posibles vías - de carácter histórico y matemático - que se abren al examinar la disposición del contenido de un envase de palmitos. Una exploración - buscando una configuración rígida de los palmitos - lleva a las figuras y a algunos de los aportes geométricos de Apolonio, Descartes y Steiner. El estudio revela una rica variedad de exploraciones que pueden realizarse - a partir de la geometría de lo cotidiano - con estudiantes de Educación Media y también con futuros profesores de Matemática.

Descartes y la Gestalt: La ilusión encerrada en las imágenes

Muchas veces obtenemos una visión de la realidad que no se corresponde con la realidad en sí misma, ya que la mente interrelaciona la percepción visual y las representaciones que guardamos en la memoria. Se muestra en esta web cómo las Matemáticas subyacen a estas ilusiones visuales.

Comprensión de la sintaxis del álgebra en tangentes a las cónicas con el método de descartes

Este artículo forma parte de la investigación maestría de la autora. En este artículo se identifican qué tendencias cognitivas presentan estudiantes de bachillerato cuando se enfrentan al tema de tangentes a las cónicas en un curso de Geometría Analítica (UNAM, 1996). También se analiza si este curso permite una mejor comprensión de la sintaxis algebraica.

Prediciendo con la regla de los signos de Descartes

En este reporte se discute, desde la socioepistemología, una experiencia realizada con estudiantes de bachillerato respecto de la Regla de los signos de Descartes, aquella que permite determinar el número de raíces positivas que una función polinómica podría presentar. El diseño de la secuencia de aprendizaje requirió el uso de la Ingeniería Didáctica como metodología, aunque no buscábamos validar la actividad de aprendizaje, sino analizar las herramientas que los estudiantes evocaran o construyeran en la experiencia.

El método de Descartes para trazar normales a curvas

El trabajo que hemos desarrollado en este artículo es un estudio de un método histórico desarrollado por Descartes para calcular la recta normal a una curva, y que puede ser aprovechado para calcular derivadas puntuales y generales de funciones. El método, requiere de la resolución de ecuaciones algebraicas y transcendentes, que en principio pueden ser complicadas (por eso ha caído en el olvido), pero que permite introducir en el aula una gran cantidad de aspectos docentes. Además, la idea en la que se fundamenta el método de Descartes puede ser aprovechada para calcular la distancia de un punto a una recta o un plano.

The Church of Scotland and the English apocalyptic imagination, 1630-1650

This article explores the evolution of the eschatological identity of the Church of Scotland within the framework of English puritan apocalyptic thought in the period 1630–50. From the beginnings of reformation, English protestant theologians constructed an elaborate series of readings of Biblical apocalyptic texts through which they attempted to understand contemporary events. By the 1630s, English puritan exegetes had begun to identify within the Biblical text a distinctive role for Scottish Presbyterianism. The Scottish church, which, in the opinion of many English puritans, moved towards a more rigorously reformed ecclesiology as the 1630s progressed, was identified as a harbinger of the millennial glory that English puritans would shortly share. But as the relationship between Parliament and Presbytery turned sour, English puritans increasingly identified the Scottish church as the apocalyptic menace that stood in the way of their millennial fulfilment – a feeling made vivid in the rhetoric of the Cromwellian invasion.

Testing the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis since 1650: Evidence from panel techniques that allow for multiple breaks

In this paper, we re-examine two important aspects of the dynamics of relative primary commodity prices, namely the secular trend and the short run volatility. To do so, we employ 25 series, some of them starting as far back as 1650 and powerful panel data stationarity tests that allow for endogenous multiple structural breaks. Results show that all the series are stationary after allowing for endogenous multiple breaks. Test results on the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis, which states that relative commodity prices follow a downward secular trend, are mixed but with a majority of series showing negative trends. We also make a first attempt at identifying the potential drivers of the structural breaks. We end by investigating the dynamics of the volatility of the 25 relative primary commodity prices also allowing for endogenous multiple breaks. We describe the often time-varying volatility in commodity prices and show that it has increased in recent years.

Making space: English women, letter-writing, and the life of the mind, c.1650-1750

This article uses women's letter-writing from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to explore the home as a site of female intellectual endeavour. Far from representing a static backdrop to the action of domestic life, the home played a dynamic role in women's experiences of the life of the mind and shaped the ways in which women thought and wrote. Letters were penned in dining rooms, parlours and closets, by firesides, and on desks and laps. In their letters, women projected images of themselves scribbling epistles to friends in order to maintain their mental intimacy. Space was both real and imagined and the physical realities of a hand-written and hand-delivered letter gave way to the imaginative possibilities brought by networks of epistolary exchange and the alternative spaces of creative thought. By reinstating the home more fully in the history of female intellectual experience, a more nuanced view of the domestic arena can be developed: one that sees the home not as a site of exclusion and confinement, but as a space for scholarship and exchange. 

Women, letter-writing and the life of the mind in England, c.1650-1750

Drawing on national and regional letter collections dating from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this article explores women's experiences of the life of the mind through an analysis of their letter-writing. This study also highlights the shortcomings of the compartmentalised nature of scholarship on women's writing and intellectual lives and proposes the letter both as a beneficial historical source and methodological tool for research on women's mental worlds. By employing an inclusive definition of intellectual and creative life, and eschewing traditional benchmarks of achievement, this article contends that women took a full part in the cultures of knowledge of their time. 

A luz na pintura de representação : mito, representação e luz na prática pictórica : (1550-1650)

Tese de doutoramento, Belas-Artes (Pintura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, 2014

Uma amarra ao mar e outra à terra. Cristãos-novos no Algarve (1558-1650)

Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em História Económica e Social Moderna