ATProto Browser

{
  "text": "...is that I'd just read this bit of Paul Lockhart's new book. Math teachers have been giving silly problems for millennia!",
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        "alt": "[text] Here is a typical example, taken from a Babylonian problem tablet (c. 1850 BC):\n\"I found a stone but did not weigh it.\nAfter I added one-seventh of its weight,\nAnd one-eleventh of this new weight,\nThe total was one ma-na.\nWhat was the original weight?\"\nThe first thing to point out is the extreme artificiality of this question. At first glance, it might seem to be a math problem of the most mundane and practical sort, dealing as it does with stones and weights and all. (The ma-na was a Babylonian unit equal to roughly 500 grams.) But on closer consideration, it is realized that the scenario depicted here is actually quite absurd. How would anyone come by this ridiculous information in the first place? It is implied that somehow there is an ability to determine the combined weights but not the weight of the stone started with.\nThis is simply not the sort of thing that would actually happen out at the construction site. This is a contrived, made-up problem for the purpose of training young scribes. In fact, such Babylonian cuneiform tablets are nothing other than ancient school textbooks. How ironic that the Hanging Gardens are no more, Nineveh and Nebuchadnezzar are forgotten names, yet amongst the ruins of once-proud Babylon can still be found the math problems at the end of the chapter!",
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  "createdAt": "2025-05-16T16:27:04.969Z"
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