mathematics

Nathalie Sinclair

Nathalie Sinclair is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nathalie Sinclair rather than just read about it. In short: Nathalie Michelle Sinclair (born 1970) is a Canadian researcher in mathematics education who holds the Canada Research Chair in Tangible Mathematics Learning at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Early life and education Sinclair was born in Grenoble, the daughter of Canadian academics who were on sabbatical there; she grew up in Calgary.

Key takeaways

Nathalie Sinclair belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nathalie Sinclair to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nathalie Sinclair from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nathalie Michelle Sinclair (born 1970) is a Canadian researcher in mathematics education who holds the Canada Research Chair in Tangible Mathematics Learning at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Early life and education Sinclair was born in Grenoble, the daughter of Canadian academics who were on sabbatical there; she grew up in Calgary. She began her undergraduate studies at McGill University in business, but quickly switched to mathematics, and then earned a master's degree with Len Berggren at Simon Fraser on the history of mathematics and mathematics in medieval Islam. She became a middle school teacher of mathematics and French on Bowen Island. Sinclair then earned her Ph.D. in 2002 from Queen's University at Kingston, under the joint supervision of Peter Taylor of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and William Higginson of the Faculty of Education.

Career

In 2003, Sinclair accepted a joint appointment in the College of Natural Sciences and the College of Education at Michigan State University. In 2014, Sinclair and Nicholas Jackiw developed a mathematical app targeted at children ages three to eight. The purpose of the app is to teach children math through "hands-on" learning. Two years later, she was named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Tangible Mathematics Learning. In March 2017, Sinclair was named Canada's Mathematics Ambassador by Partners in Research for her contributions to the field of mathematics. Later that year, Sinclair was elected a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2019, Sinclair was awarded the Svend Pedersen Lecture Award.

Selected publications Sinclair, Nathalie; Yurita, Violeta (September 2008), "To be or to become: how dynamic geometry changes discourse", Research in Mathematics Education, 10 (2): 135–150, doi:10.1080/14794800802233670. Winner of the Janet Duffin Award for the best paper of the year in Research in Mathematics Education. de Freitas, Elizabeth; Sinclair, Nathalie (2014), Mathematics and the Body: Material Entanglements in the Classroom, Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107039483. Honourable Mention for Innovations in Curriculum Studies, American Educational Research Association, 2015.

References

External links Home page Google scholar profile

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nathalie Sinclair

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nathalie Sinclair claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nathalie Sinclair before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nathalie Sinclair ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nathalie Sinclair

In research: Nathalie Sinclair appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nathalie Sinclair in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nathalie Sinclair is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970 births, 21st-century Canadian mathematicians, 21st-century Canadian women mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nathalie Sinclair outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nathalie Sinclair in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nathalie Sinclair means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nathalie Sinclair out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nathalie Sinclair in simple terms?

Nathalie Michelle Sinclair (born 1970) is a Canadian researcher in mathematics education who holds the Canada Research Chair in Tangible Mathematics Learning at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Early life and education Sinclair was born in Grenoble, the daughter of Canadian academics who were…

Why does Nathalie Sinclair matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nathalie Sinclair?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nathalie Sinclair.