Uptaded Mon Aug 31st (a few words added for clarification and an error is corrected)
- Write down, in your own words, a definition of mathematics.
- Write down, in your own words, a definition of number system.
- Consider a small collection of objects, say, pens. What is the largest collection that you can state how many objects it has just by looking at it, without actually couning? (Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about him "From a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp.”) (Do not overthink this question, it is as easy as it sounds)
- Create a hypothesis as to the meaning of the scratches on the Ishango bone or why they might have been made. Be creative. The only requirement is that your hypothesis matches the pattern exhibited in the bone.
- Write down 336 in Egytian hieroglyphics,
- Write down 336 in the invented multiplicative system we saw in class, (This system is discribed right before the Chinese multiplicative one)
- Write down 336 in the Chinese number system,
- Write 77500 in the Mayan number system.
- Write 77500 in the Mesopotamian number system.
- The following is a paragraph from "The universal history of numbers", by Georges Ifrah, "Another example of hight numbers . It is from a can be found on a statue from Hieraconpolis, dating from 2800 BEC, where the number of enemies slain by a king called KhaSeKhem are shown as… by the following sign”. You need to find out the …, that is the number of enemies slain from the hieroglyphic on the left. Note that the book continues “Early examples show rather irregular outlines and groupings of the signs.” This irregular grouping can find in our example.