I’m in. My plan is to re-write my 2007 NaNoWriMo-winning novel from the ground up, now that I am so much closer to actually knowing what I’m doing. My goal is 1k words per weekday, and 4k words per weekend-day (with Nov 25 & 26–off from work–counting as weekend days). If that goes completely to [...]
The biggest pitfall in studying ancient mathematics is subconsciously superimposing anachronistic views on the ancient way of thought. For example, the Sumerians had two different concepts that would both today be called ‘addition’, and for different concepts that we would lump as multiplication. Here’s an example of a mathematical problem and solution, given in “conform” translation: The [...]
I found a reference to the preceding problem in the book A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts, in appendix 6 on page 405. This problem statement is referred to as tablet DPA 37. It states: There is a curious error in DPA 37. The area mentioned in the answer exceeds the correctly computed area of the square by [...]