Tarumbeta and its mathematical potentialities

Abstract

The article aims to demonstrate the ethnomathematics potentialities of the Tarumbeta game whose rules guide ways of thinking and acting based on mathematical ethno models of African origin. The study dialogues with the perspective of Ethnomathematics and ethnomodeling as possibilities of articulation between emic and ethical knowledge in game situations where the values of the African worldview are present, such as orality, ancestry, cooperation, among others. Mental counts and calculations are also mentioned, which, within the limits of the game rule, refers to African thought. The game is approached as a provider of circumstances for the production of knowledge through problem situations whose solution requires decision making and active participation of players. In this sense, the question that drives the study is to know: What mathematical knowledge is Tarumbeta capable of mobilizing in the outsider observer? To approach an answer, the aim is to capture the emic ethnomodels present in the rules of the game whose interpretation mobilizes ethical ethnomodels of the outsider observer, generating dialogical knowledge that articulates different logics. It is argued that the Tarumbeta game has pedagogical potentials that dialog with the objects of knowledge provided for in the curriculum of the Brazilian school, such as counting, triangular numbers, arithmetic progression, Tartaglia's triangle, among others.