This entry has been created primarily to help me write my History of Mathematics essay.

Plimpton 322 - Neither Sherlock Holmes Nor Babylon
Plimpton 322 is the name of an artifact of the Old Babylonian period. It is a cuneiform tablet and notable not least for its mathematical content. It is regarded by many, rightly or wrongly, to be a table of pythagorean triples, that is: triplets of numbers which solve Pythagoras' equation. This essay is based on an article by Eleanor Robson, entitled Neither Sherlock Holmes Nor Babylon: A Reassessment of Plimton 322. In that article, Robson criticises a general attitude exhibited by some enthusiasts and mathematico-historians. The main target of Robson's attack is the view that Plimpton 322 can be studied in isolation of its cultural and historical context. She explores the existing theories involving generating functions and trigonometry, and puts forward an alternative involving reciprocal pairs and non-anachronistic geometry.