Ian+Week+2

In early history around 2500 BC the acient Babylonians had a very interesting and practical method of measurement and counting. They used practical things to measure other things such as using barleycorn and a finger as a measurement. One problem i find with this system is cant the length of barleycorn and a finger change? Other than that their system is very practical and was used to find out how much food a family would need all year. This would be done to figure out the amount of crops that was needed to be produced. They used a base 60 system to do everything. The maximum number that they had anything for was 60 then other characters were repeated. As the text says this could be difficult to tell the difference between 1 and 60. The text says " it will usually be clear from the context ". This meant that we would have to interpret based on the other textual information. The concept of 0 wasnt created till much later in India to make any number system much easier. This was becuase of the lack of a 0 which wasnt introduced The Babylonian system was also very good for fractions but they kept things easy for their books by using the recripricals. Its also interesting to know that the Babylonians had discovered a way of solving triangles similar to the Pythegreans.

I found this article very interesting because it was one of the most useful and early counting systems. Its important to know about this system becuase it was a very important discovery in history. Its also interesting that they found a system that worked like they Pythegreans but didnt nessaraly need to use all intergers like the Pythegreans. Unlike the Pythegreans the Babylonians had a fractional system and they cared more about the practical use of math.