ANSWERS: 2
  • The fellow who was being chased by cannibals and needed twelve feet of boards to get away and did not have but 11 7/8. Mr Bill
  • "The earliest known use of fractions is ca. 2800 BC as Ancient Indus Valley units of measurement.[citation needed] The Egyptians used Egyptian fractions ca. 1000 BC. The Greeks used unit fractions and later continued fractions and followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, ca. 530 BC, discovered that the square root of two cannot be expressed as a fraction. In 150 BC Jain mathematicians in India wrote the "Sthananga Sutra", which contains work on the theory of numbers, arithmetical operations, operations with fractions. In Sanskrit literature, fractions, or rational numbers were always expressed by an integer followed by a fraction. When the integer is written on a line, the fraction is placed below it and is itself written on two lines, the numerator called amsa part on the first line, the denominator called cheda “divisor” on the second below. If the fraction is written without any particular additional sign, one understands that it is added to the integer above it. If it is marked by a small circle or a cross (the shape of the “plus” sign in the West) placed on its right, one understands that it is subtracted from the integer. [...] Al-Hassār, a Muslim mathematician from the Maghreb (North Africa) specializing in Islamic inheritance jurisprudence during the 12th century, developed the modern symbolic mathematical notation for fractions, where the numerator and denominator are separated by a horizontal bar. This same fractional notation appears soon after in the work of Fibonacci in the 13th century. While the Persian mathematician JamshÄ«d al-KāshÄ« claimed to have discovered decimal fractions himself in the 15th century, J. Lennart Berggrenn notes that he was mistaken, as decimal fractions were first used five centuries before him by the Baghdadi mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi as early as the 10th century." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraction_(mathematics%29 Further information: "History of Fractions" http://nrich.maths.org/public/viewer.php?obj_id=2515

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