Oct 11 Assignment 1 Reflections

Researching about how the ancient Babylonians solved this difficult problem on generating reduced Pythagorean triples was no easy task. Lots of rich information was lost from the primary source as the left part of the tablet was broken off. In the end people had to resort to proposals on how the ancient Babylonians actually did it based off of their other works and discoveries. The proposal I used was the reciprocal pairs method, however it used a lot of modern day algebra to deduce what happened, and didn't utilize much of the notations and numeral systems the ancient Babylonians used. It was nice to revist the cuneiform script in sexagesimals (base 60) again, however I didn't explicitly use them. I still think it was neat to know that they knew such big Pythagorean triples with the limited amount of tools and knowledge they had. I worked well with my group mates. Each person had their own task and it was a nice transition between us presenting. I felt we could've spent more time on interactive activities, but due to time constraints we briefly brushed through them. Giving the participants/audience more time to think and go through what was happening would've been helpful too. I am glad to present on a topic that I am familiar with, something I had a fun time learning about when I took number theory one year ago. I saw the intricate details of proving the Pythagorean triples theorem. Boiling it down to a simple fun history math presentation was a mild way to express the interesting aspect of this topic.