The point that made me stop was the article’s discussion of Babylonian word problems and whether they were really practical. I have always thought that mathematics, in its earliest form, was closely connected with practical life. Mathematical ideas developed because people needed to deal with trade, measurement, engineering, accounting, or other economical reasons. However, this article shows that Babylonian mathematics was not only a tool for solving practical problems. Although many of the problems used situations such as grain piles or construction, some of them were clearly too simplified or unrealistic to be used directly in daily work. I think this shows that Babylonian mathematics was becoming more abstract. It was no longer only attached to practical production. It was also used to help students practice mathematical methods and see relationships between quantities from a mathematical aspect.
This also inspired me to think about modern applied word problems. In class, we discussed an example of a teacher who was trying to introduce the idea of proportion by using a problem about interior renovation. One student’s family worked in renovation, and the student had also participated in it before. Therefore, he knew that the proportions in the question could be affected by many different factors. He raised his hand and gave several examples to explain why the problem was not rigorous. If I were the teacher, I would not simply tell him that he was thinking too much and that it was only a simple math question. Instead, I would first praise the student's knowledge, and then explain that the problem was not designed by interior renovation expert to test real renovation knowledge. The question was designed to help students who do not know much about renovation see the proportional relationship between two quantities. I think this kind of answer can respect the student’s real-life knowledge, while also helping him understand why we sometimes use simplified models in mathematics.
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