[HN Gopher] Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigono...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigonometry
        
       Author : Luc
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2023-10-01 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
        
       | diydsp wrote:
       | "the 1's were originally there and likely contributed to the
       | break" (cuneiform)
        
       | elteto wrote:
       | Seems to me, an ignorant on the subject as a whole, that they
       | came up with a quite complex explanation that fits the data, but
       | we can't know for sure and most likely never will. And this is a
       | problem with mathematics because it is self-consistent: we can
       | build a whole theory on top of the contents of the tablet and it
       | will produce the correct results. We just can't know if what we
       | came up with was the same thing they used back then, or if we are
       | just doing modern mathematics with some old data.
        
       | empath-nirvana wrote:
       | Wildberger kind of notoriously is a non-believer in real numbers,
       | which sort of comes across with the statements about it being the
       | only "completely accurate" trig table and comments about how the
       | base 60 system is somehow richer and more accurate than decimal
       | numbers.
        
         | fluoridation wrote:
         | He's probably one of those constructivists who don't believe in
         | non-computable numbers. I recommend this post (and its comment
         | section) to anyone interested in the subject:
         | http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2011/02/10/e-e-escultura-and-th...
        
           | Bjartr wrote:
           | That comments section is a trip and a half
        
       | bigbillheck wrote:
       | Counterpoint: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-
       | unity/dont-fal...
        
         | lamontcg wrote:
         | FWIW this information is easy to find via the pubpeer browser
         | extension. It puts a banner on this HN page which leads to a
         | comment page which has this rebuttal linked there.
        
       | tedunangst wrote:
       | I'm not sure I follow how base 60 permits more exact computation
       | than base 10.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-10-01 23:01 UTC)