Mathematical tools of Babylonian astronomers

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

A bout 120 new Mesopotamian mathematical cuneiform texts, all from the Norwegian Schøyen Collection, are published in the author’s book A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts, Springer (2007). Most of the texts are Old Babylonian (1900–1600 BC), but some are older (Sumerian), or younger (Kassite). In addition to the presentation and discussion of these new texts, the book cont...

3 Mathematical Tools 3

Mathematical tools for finance

This note deals with the basic mathematical tools commonly used in finance. Stochastic calculus and its applications will be presented. The best will be done to present both the PDE and the probabilistic approaches to finance. However, the focus will be mostly on (vanilla) option pricing and fixed income techniques won’t really be presented. For additional information such as Girsanov’s Theorem...

The Babylonian benefit

E nter any research laboratory and you will most likely find an almost Babylonian confusion: French researchers discussing their experiments in French, but quickly switching to English when joined by their Chinese colleague. A German researcher may answer the phone in German while talking to a Spanish colleague in English. English is the de facto lingua franca of science: of research papers, gr...

Babylonian resistor networks

The ancient Babylonians had an iterative technique for numerically approximating the values of square roots. Their method can be physically implemented using series and parallel resistor networks. A recursive formula for the equivalent resistance Req is developed and converted into a nonrecursive solution for circuits using geometrically increasing numbers of identical resistors. As an example,...