mjApr 8
This paper deserves a rant 🧵! Besides HARKing, there are plenty of other ongoing, institutionalized problems in #science. Cherry picking, retconning, historic negation &/or narrative reframing to make your results sound surprising (clickbait) all seem to apply here. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Pythagoras was wrong: there ar...
Pythagoras was wrong: there are no universal musical harmonies, study finds

The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge centuries of

University of Cambridge
Show threadmjApr 8
The famous science communicator/historian Pythagoras passed along many great ideas, as we all know. His original cult ideas include beans & irrational numbers being forbidden. His argument for those simple ratios is nothing more than literal #numerology. He formed his hypothesis to meet his #bias.
Show threadmjApr 8
ICYMI, the "Pythagorean Theorem" didn't come from him, nor "the West." Nor did anything he said about music intervals. He repeated what had been known in antiquity for more than 1000 years. He traveled widely, gathered #knowledge & wrote it down. mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/B...

Babylonian Pythagoras
Babylonian Pythagoras

Maths History
Show threadmj
Given that #Babylonians used a base-60 number system, one is forced to wonder how much of this ancient #information was lost to the transition to base-10, where none of this is any longer immediately obvious. The number 12 is the best/lowest bridge between them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_o...

Music of Mesopotamia - Wikiped...
Music of Mesopotamia - Wikipedia

Apr 8 at 8:38pmWeb
Show threadmjApr 11
Important note: it's well known that changing the base# system doesn't change the underlying #dynamics or physics that an equation describes. W/one exception, quite relevant here: the remainders of divisions change because the divisor is different. Base-60 shows more 'integer-like' results than 10.
Show threadmjApr 12
Example: pressbooks.cuny.edu/math4ee/chap...

Sec. 2.6 – Babylonian Fraction...
Sec. 2.6 – Babylonian Fractions; Writing Terminating and Repeating Decimals as Fractions; Multiplying Fractions Visually – College Mathematics for Elementary Education with Algebra Extensions

Chapter 2, Section 6 Math Topics – Babylonian Fractions; Writing Terminating and Repeating Decimals as Fractions Elementary Education – Introduction to Multiplying Fractions Visually; Kitchen…

College Mathematics for Elementary Education with Algebra Extensions