Some things never change...

There is a wonderful article by Jöran Friberg in the latest issue of Notices of the AMS entitled "A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts" [pdf file]. It explores the mathematics in several cuneiform texts from the 4th millennium to the 1st millennium B.C., much of it from the Old Babylonian scribe schools. Some highlights:

• We all know (!) that the Babylonians used base 60. However, they actually used a hybrid of base 10 and base 60: they would group by 10s until they reached 59, and then would start grouping by 60s.
• They had amazing calculatory powers: one of tablets has the computation of 15 to the 12th power.
• The school tablets are clearly from students, and we can "follow in detail the progress of [the] ... students in handwriting and computational ability from the first year student's elementary multiplication exercises written with large and clumsy number signs to the accomplished model student's advanced mathematical problem texts written in a sure hand and with almost microscopically small cuneiform signs."
• One of the tablets shown has so many mistakes that an exasperated teacher (apparently) drew a big "X" across the entire tablet! As I said, some things never change...