B 3700 Year Old Babylonian Tablet of Trigonometry Tables

[jedishrfu]

TL;DR Summary

Translated tablet shows Babylonians knew Trigonometry 1500 years before the Greeks did.

https://www.upworthy.com/3700-year-old-babylonian-stone-tablet-gets-translated-changes-history

 

[Office_Shredder]

"have just made an incredible discovery"

Upworthy is terrible about this kind of stuff. This isn't that new, and I think has no implications for how we should do trigonometry. Here's an article from 4 years ago giving an opinion on the subject that isn't designed to generate as many clicks as possible.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/dont-fall-for-babylonian-trigonometry-hype/

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I think has no implications for how we should do trigonometry.

I do not understand your post. Why is this quote relevant to the historical observation?

 

[Office_Shredder]

I do not understand your post. Why is this quote relevant to the historical observation?

Because the third paragraph of the original article is

This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education. This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new."

 

[berkeman]

I didn't see the "translation" part. Is there a link to the translation of the tablet and what it means? Thanks.

 

[Office_Shredder]

The Wikipedia article does a good job of summarizing it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322

Basically it contains some Pythagorean triples. They are written as ratios so maybe they are intended to be considered as trig function values. There's an open question about whether the Pythagorean triples are even the end goal of the tablet, or if they're just an intermediate step in solving something that's broken off.