One thing I found interesting was that Babylonian word problems were not always "practical" as they first appeared. Even though many problems were framed around practical things like grains (1 pur get 4 gur of grains??), there are some quite unrealistic numbers!
For example:
18-24m high is like an eight floor tall building?? Who is skilled enough to dump grains that tall???
Jokes aside, this made me think of some interesting modern math examples that we might use in our classes. Say the house painting example, the question may not be entirely realistic, but they were designed to practice a particular skill!
No comments:
Post a Comment