Daniel Mansfield with the Plimpton 322 Babylonian clay tablet in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. (Image courtesy UNSW/Andrew Kelly) The translation on the ...

The Pythagorean Theorem—discovered by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE—is a cornerstone of mathematics. Simply stated as a 2 + b 2 = c 2, the theorem posits that the sum of ...

Suppose that a ramp leading to the top of a ziggurat wall is 56 cubits long, and the vertical height of the ziggurat is 45 cubits. What is the distance x from the outside base of the ramp to the point ...

In one of your math classes, you might have been taught that geometry and trigonometry were products of the ancient Greeks. That's not entirely accurate, as a new discovery proves that both were ...

Our modern understanding of trigonometry harks back to ancient Greek astronomers studying the movement of celestial bodies through the night sky. But in 2017, I showed the ancient Babylonians likely ...

Most every kid learns a² + b² = c² in math. Pythagoras, right? Wrong. Babylonians used trigonometry 1,000 years before the Greeks. Time to rewrite history? This unassuming clay tablet may yet turn the ...

I'm still having trouble with the the concept that only integer Pythagorean triples are represented (up to hyp = 2000). For all such triangles, all the trigonometric functions are rational and could ...

A present day photo of the ruins of Babylon in Iraq. Suppose that a ramp leading to the top of a ziggurat wall is 56 cubits long, and the vertical height of the ziggurat is 45 cubits. What is the ...