Sun Tzu math problem

 my original approach was seeing that 1/4 + 1/3 + 1/2 = 13/12 . I decided that this approach would make sense because each person is having so much of a dish and they end up having 13/12 dishes each. Then we can solve by multiplying by 5 to get 65 dishes to 60 people. 

However I considered this problem with Shannon who first looked at the least common multiple which was 12 and that for every 12 people we would need 13 dishes. This led to the same answer, however I think that his way may have been more like the way that people had done it in the past.

I think that sometimes the story can matter as it can draw the reader into the context of the problem, but there are times when those stories can distract from the problem. The context of that story would matter in order to make a reader invested. Some readers may find some comfort in culturally important stories, but I’m unsure if it has mattered that there is a western story in a boring math problem. Like a driving problem in the US isn’t made more relatable or interesting simply by it being a trip between Washington DC and Virginia. That could be my bias though.

Major reading

 I stopped and thought about when they brought up the idea of personifying numbers with characters. What an interesting idea! How do you connect number with these characters? What does that mean?

I stopped at 5 being a funny by accident woman, what a weird way to personify a number. Who is deciding these? When?

Euclid reply

 

• Why is Euclid and Euclidean geometry still studied to this day? Why do you think this book has been so important (and incredibly popular) over centuries?
• Is there beauty in the Euclidean postulates, common notions and principles for proofs? How can we define beauty if these are considered beautiful?

I think Euclidean geometry is still studied because as we continue to learn mathematics we want to discuss the basics in a logical way. I think the idea is that people can access math from a basic way which is accessible to people with only a few basic rules.

I think that the beauty in Euclid’s postulates is the simplicity and accessibility of them. There are definitely better written ways of accessing the material, but they are the “earliest” version and allow people to enter into a world outside of their own math world. Maybe a beautiful ideal of mathematics and vision of Ancient Greece.