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Show LONG A PLAGUE TO YOUTH Schoolboys of Many Centuries Ago Had to Wrestle With Problems of Arithmetic. The modern schoolboy may find comfort in the fact that for 3.600 years schoolboys have been worried by just such desperate problems in arithmetic as annoy him most. Among the archeological discoveries in Egypt is a papyrus roll, in excellent condition, dating from a period about 1700 B. C. This roll, which has a long heading beginning "Directions how to attain the knowledge of all dark things," proves beyond a doubt that ; the Egyptian of that time had a thor-ough thor-ough knowledge of the elements of arithmetic. I Numerous examples show that their principal operations with units and fractions were made by means of addition addi-tion and multiplication. Subtraction and division were not known in their present form, but correct results were obtained, nevertheless. Equations are also found in the papyrus. Here is one which brings the Egyptian schoolboy home to us: Ten measures of barley are to be divided di-vided among ten persons in such a manner man-ner that each subsequent person shall receive one-eighth of a measure less than the one before him. Another example ex-ample given is: There are seven men, each one has seven cats, each cat has eaten seven mice, each mouse has eaten seven grains of barley. Each grain of barley would have yielded seven measures of barley. How much barley has been lost? The papyrus also contains calculations calcula-tions of area, the calculation of the area of a circle, attempts at squaring the circle, and finally calculation of the cubic measurements of pyramids. |