Category Archives: Mathematics of the Ancient World

And yet even Archimedes, who was a kinsman and friend of King Hiero, wrote to him that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight; and emboldened, as we are told, by the strength of his … Continue reading →

Back in October of 2008 I wrote about the Pythagoreans – which is what the group led by Pythagoras was called. Here’s a link to that post. I’ll write next week about some of the applications of mathematics in the … Continue reading →

The way different cultures have chosen to represent numbers can be a very interesting topic.  Many people forget that, like our English language, the base-ten place value system is a somewhat arbitrary cultural choice that we have made as a … Continue reading →