The History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Stedall Jacqueline

The History of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction by Stedall Jacqueline

Author:Stedall, Jacqueline [Stedall, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-02-01T00:00:00+00:00


4. The front page of Robert Smith’s arithmetic book, Greenrow Academy, 1832

The Hersee collection includes five mathematical workbooks by Robert Smith from the years 1832 and 1833 (see Figure 4). Over these two years Robert filled almost 1,700 pages with mathematical examples, so that we have a very detailed picture of what he studied. These books were not the first that Robert wrote because he had already advanced beyond the elementary operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The earliest surviving book, for 1832, begins with the Rule of Three. This was the rule that enabled countless generations of students to answer questions like: A men dig a ditch in B days, how long would it take C men to do the same job? The rule is so named because there are three known quantities (A, B, C) from which a fourth (the answer) must be found. The rule originated in India and probably travelled westwards with the Indian numerals: it was ubiquitous in Islamic and European arithmetic texts for centuries.



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