by Nam Nguyen ‘19
Numbers and basic computation appeared in Ancient Egypt as early as 2700 BCE. But you might not know that Ancient Egyptians demanded that every fraction have 1 in the numerator. They wanted to write any rational between 0 and 1 as a sum of such “unit” fractions. Such sums are called Egyptian fractions.
Figure 1: Egyptian fractions written on a papyrus scroll [1]
There are many ways to write 2/3 as an Egyptian fraction:
Continue reading EgyptianFractions
Nam Nguyen ’19 plans to become a math major. He enjoys playing badminton.
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