Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bucharest , Romania
Theorema lui Pithagora este , se pare , cea mai veche theorema . Exista mai mult
de 60 de demonstratii a acestei teoreme . Vechimea ei se pierde in negura timpului .
Nevoia de a construi cladiri a obligat la descoperirea acestei teoreme : ziguratele din
Mesopotamia , piramidele din Egipt . 3800 de ani au trecut de la descoperirea ei .
Se spunea despre aceasta tableta ca este fie cea mai veche lucrare de teoria
numerelor , fie ca este o tablita pentru uz didactic in scopul invatarii listei tripletilor
( numere naturale ) care satisfac teorema .
This is a tablet that was made/written around 1800 BC. It was donated to the Columbia
University by a philantropist G. A. Plimpton in the 1930s. The tablet was written by an
unknown scribe.
If you look at the tablet above, you will see that it contains three columns. After considering
it, it is noticeable that the this table contains part of some kind of list of Pythagorean triples.
This means that for all triples the formula
is valid.
Currently there are two prevailing views of the nature of this tablet. One says that the tablet
is the oldest surviving scholarly work in number theory, while the other says that the tablet
was just like a notebook used to learn and teach the list of Pythagorean triples.
The numbers
The main content of Plimpton 322 is a table of numbers, with four columns and fifteen rows, in Babylonian
sexagesimal notation. The fourth column is just a row number, in order from 1 to 15. The second and third
columns are completely visible in the surviving tablet. However, the edge of the first column has been
broken off, and there are two consistent extrapolations for what the missing digits could be; these
interpretations differ only in whether or not each number starts with an additional digit equal to 1. With the
(1:)33:45 45 1:15 11
(1:)29:21:54:02:15 27:59 48:49 12
(1:)23:13:46:40 56 1:46 15
It is possible that additional columns were present in the broken-off part of the tablet to the left of these
columns. Conversion of these numbers from sexagesimal to decimal raises additional ambiguities, as the
Babylonian sexagesimal notation did not specify the power of the initial digit of each number.
Quoting wikipedia :
In 2002, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) published research by Robson rejecting earlier
mathematical misconceptions of the tablet and pointing out that historical, cultural and linguistic evidence all
reveal the tablet to be more likely "a list of regular reciprocal pairs."[7] In 2003, the MAA awarded Robson
with the Lester R. Ford Award for her work, stating it is "unlikely that the author of Plimpton 322 was either a
professional or amateur mathematician. More likely he seems to have been a teacher and Plimpton 322 a
set of exercises."[8] Robson takes an approach that in modern terms would be characterized as algebraic,
though she describes it in concrete geometric terms and argues that the Babylonians would also have
In this interpretation, x and 1/x would have appeared on the tablet in the broken-off portion to the left of the
first column. For instance, row 11 of Plimpton 322 can be generated in this way for x = 2.
Robson points out that the tablet reveals mathematical "methods -— reciprocal pairs, cut-and-paste
geometry, completing the square, dividing by regular common factors -— [which] were all simple techniques
taught in scribal schools" of that time period, and that its author appears to be familiar with the prevalent
document formats used by "temple and palace administrators of Larsa" in that period.[10] Therefore, Robson
argues that the author was likely not a student but more likely a "professional bureaucratic scribe" who knew
the names of "about half a dozen ancient Mesopotamian teachers," all whom of which "had careers in
temple administration."[11]
Finally, Robson notes that Plimpton 322 repeats "the same mathematical set-up fifteen times, each with a
different group of well-behaved regular numbers." This, Robson points out, "would have enabled a teacher
to set his students repeated exercises on the same mathematical problem, and to check their intermediate
and final answers without repeating the calculations himself."[11] Therefore, though likely written by a
bureaucrat, it is unlikely to have been written for bureaucrats, as "its organisational structure most closely
resembles a class of school mathematics documents that we might call 'teachers’ problem lists.'" Robson
Thus, the tablet can be interpreted as giving a sequence of worked-out exercises of the type solved by the
method from tablet YBC 6967. It could, Robson suggests, have been used by a teacher as a problem set to
assign to students “
Comentariul meu :
Trei cazuri sunt exact cind numarul din coloana intii se termina
cu 15 . S-ar putea ca in loc de 15 sa fie alt numar .
Work in progress .