Rhind Mathematical Papyrus 2/n Table - Comparison To Other Table Texts

Comparison To Other Table Texts

An older ancient Egyptian papyrus contained a similar table of Egyptian fractions, the Lahun Mathematical Papyri, written around 1850 BCE is about the age of one unknown source for the Rhind papyrus. The Kahun 2/n fractions were identical to the fraction decompositions given in the Rhind Papyrus' 2/n table.

The Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll (EMLR), circa 1,900 BCE lists decompositions of fractions of the form 1/n into other unit fractions. The table consisted of 26 unit fraction series of the form 1/n written as sums of other rational numbers.

The Akhmim wooden tablet wrote fractions in the form 1/n in terms of sums of hekat rational numbers, 1/3, 1/7, 1/10, 1/11 and 1/13. In this document a two-part set of fractions were written in terms of Eye of Horus fractions which were fractions of the form and remainders expressed in terms of a unit called ro. The answers were checked by multiplying the initial divisor by the proposed solution and checking that the resulting answer was, which equals 1.

Read more about this topic:  Rhind Mathematical Papyrus 2/n Table

Famous quotes containing the words comparison to other, comparison, table and/or texts:

    “It is very important not to become hard. The artist must always have one skin too few in comparison to other people, so you feel the slightest wind.”
    —Shusha Guppy (b. 1938)

    “We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great- hearted men.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    “The party of God and the party of Literature have more in common than either will admit; their texts may conflict, but their bigotries coincide. Both insist on being the sole custodians of the true word and its only interpreters.”
    —Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)