I love it when someone can cut through the hype of science news and give proper perspective.

I love it when someone can cut through the hype of science news and give proper perspective.

If you aren’t following John Baez​, you should be.

Originally shared by John Baez

Babylon? Babble on!

Maybe you saw the excited headlines about that clay tablet:

Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 will make studying maths easier, mathematician says

This mysterious ancient tablet could teach us a thing or two about math

Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study

Australian university scientists solve 3700-year-old mystery

They’re pretty much all wrong! First of all, this tablet was deciphered in 1957. While the tablet is remarkable, it will not teach us a thing or two about math. While its significance is unclear – since it’s hard to know what the Babylonians actually used it for, and no amount of staring at the tablet will reveal that – there are some good theories.

On top of all that, there’s no real news here.

Yes, the scientists at Australian University published a paper on this tablet, but they didn’t really make any progress in understanding it. In fact, their press release spreads some bizarre misinformation! For example, they claim this tablet is “superior in some ways to modern trigonometry”. It’s not.

For a more detailed take-down, read the article below by Evelyn Lamb. And for good information about this remarkable tablet, see:

• Wikipedia, Plimpton 322, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322

The article explains exactly what the tablet says. Basically it’s a list of 15 Pythagorean triples a² + b² = c², where each row tells you a, c, and a fraction that’s either a²/b² or c²/b², where b is the short side of the right triangle. It has 6 errors in it, which unfortunately are corrected in the Wikipedia article.

It’s an amazing tablet, but a lot of Babylonian mathematical tablets are amazing, and that’s not news. Check out the article Richard Elwes and I wrote, about a tablet from 1700 BC that shows a very accurate value of the square root of 2:

• John Baez and Richard Elwes, Babylon and the square root of 2, https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/babylon-and-the-square-root-of-2/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/dont-fall-for-babylonian-trigonometry-hype/