Talk:Ostomachion

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A fact from Ostomachion appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 13 December 2007.

[edit] Am I missing something?

In trying to see how many ways the 14 irregular pieces could be put together to make a square, it now appears that Archimedes anticipated aspects of combinatorics.

I am sorry, but I fail to see how this follows from the translated text provided in the article. Where does it say Archimedes was specifically trying to see how many ways the square can be constructed? And did he get a result, or even a constraint on the result? -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 11:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I seem to recall seeing something in print saying he actually got a particular very large number. Maybe you're missing something simply because no one's inserted what you're missing into the article, and should have. I'll see if I can find anything. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

One of the links provided at the bottom of the article makes oblique reference to some palimpsest or another having words that are suggestive of the combinatorics angle to the original text, but the whole thing seems very conjectural indeed. Very little actual text from archimedes himself is spelled out in that. Mostly it appears that the guy "recreated" archimedes thought processes based on vague clues in the palimpsest, without providing clear connection to the text. It may be that that abstract merely fails to mention the specific textual bits, or that there are none. I don't know. But the linked to abstract is far from conclusive in my view. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 07:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)