Babylon and the Square Root of 2 (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Babylon and the Square Root of 2 (2011)

johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com

73 pointsfortran779 comments

Otto Neugebauer gets named at the very end of the article but his book ancient Mesopotamian mathematics and astronomy are amazing for stuff like this

I would pay good money for a replica of that tablet. Even better if it had similar material to the original clay.

This tablet could be made by 12 years old scribbling his homework. Most important thing is they actually had geometry and used it.

"So it makes sense to take the average of a and 2/a, and use that as a new guess."

Wait, is this supposed to be a secret, ancient Babylonian/Indian method of finding the square root? When I was a child, this is how I was told it was done (by hand).

> Wait, is this supposed to be a secret, ancient Babylonian/Indian method of finding the square root? When I was a child, this is how I was told it was done (by hand).

I'm not sure that I can find that interpretation from the article. Can you tell me more? I saw it more as trying to decode and understand the mindset of a culture far removed by what they left behind.

I was asking if that algorithm was meant to be part of "the mindset of a culture far removed" from the typical reader or not.

You wouldn't know what the author intended, but you would know if you ever heard of how to do square roots by hand.

For me, the intent seems to be clarified by this sentence:

> And our question is: what did they really know about the square root of 2?

Brahmagupta you petulant child! Knowledge often tends to be passed on to future generations without leaving a trail to its origin. Glad to hear about you zeroing in on the art of hastaprayoga at such a tender age. Keep mastering those marmashastras and you might one day decimate the old ways of thinking and reshape the world as we know.

The home-schooled daughter of an Indian inventor told me about long division.

I attended yoga classes at my local Jewish Community Center, but at first I fell asleep.

My grandmother was afraid of meditation - she thought that if you emptied your mind, the (Christian) devil would come in.

But my mother practiced it regularly and taught me how.

I had a secular upbringing, though. The only deity she disliked was...Baal.

The point is, there's no reason to assume I found out about calculating square roots or anything else the same way as most people.

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