Can someone explain Euclid's Algorithm to me?

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter 1MileCrash
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Algorithm Explain
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
4 replies · 2K views
1MileCrash
Messages
1,338
Reaction score
41
My book is utterly useless - it vaguely gives me a history behind it, its motivations, and then lists an example in which it precedes to write a bunch of utterly false statements and then just.. spits out the answer.

Can someone explain to me what on Earth is going on in the attached picture? If this is not a notational confusion or typos in my book, then I must assert that Euclid's Algorithm makes absolutely no sense. 212 = 106.2, therefore here you go. I demand the author be sent to the lunatic asylum immediately.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20140324_164917653.jpg
    IMG_20140324_164917653.jpg
    29.9 KB · Views: 486
Last edited:
Mathematics news on Phys.org
How about you rotate that scan and try to get as much of the explanation as you can.
 
Ok, I just looked it up online and it is fairly straight forward. I just don't understand how you can write the mathematical statement 212 = 106.2 + 0 and be ok with that. It makes me want to torch the book. I still have no idea what they are doing even after getting a coherent explanation.
 
1MileCrash said:
My book is utterly useless - it vaguely gives me a history behind it, its motivations, and then lists an example in which it precedes to write a bunch of utterly false statements and then just.. spits out the answer.

Can someone explain to me what on Earth is going on in the attached picture? If this is not a notational confusion or typos in my book, then I must assert that Euclid's Algorithm makes absolutely no sense. 212 = 106.2, therefore here you go. I demand the author be sent to the lunatic asylum immediately.
1.106 is meaning 1 times 106, I think...
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Michael Hardy
Mandelbroth said:
1.106 is meaning 1 times 106, I think...

Oh thank goodness, now I don't have to switch majors.

Thanks you two.