"In the Mahabharata, we find the story of Nala and Damayanti. Damayanti announces her intention to remarry by choosing a husband (swayamvara). As Nala and Rituparna (the king of Ayodhya) are rushing from Ayodhya to Vidarbha to participate, they stop near a Vibhitaka tree—the five-faced fruits of which were used in the ancient Indian game of dice. Rituparna shows off his knowledge of statistics by saying: “The number of fruits in the two branches of the tree is 2095, count them if you like.” Nala says he will do exactly that – count them by the empirical method of physically cutting down the tree. Anxious not be delayed, Rituparna dissuades Nala by offering to explain how it was done using sampling and probability theory, also used in the game of dice."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Computer scientistsEducators from IndiaMathematicians from IndiaPhysicists from IndiaScientists from India
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Do Indians have a scientific temper? Ancient texts reveal we did, way before the West, 2019
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C._K._Raju
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
C. K. Raju
78 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by C. K. Raju →
Related Quotes
"Such forgeries were common enough... So unenviable was the reputation that priests had acquired in this matter that I…"
"note here that the long-standing claims of Euclid's existence, and the surprisingly flimsy evidence on which they are…"
"The khichdi geometry in the NCERT text for Class 9 is indigestible because it has mixed up the Elements by mixing up …"
"It would be rather pointless and confusing to retain in these books information that was incorrect or defective or in…"
"Nevertheless, this laughable hypothesis is exactly what has been adopted with the 12th and 16th c. sources of “Greek”…"
"Attributing a book to a famous early source added not only to-the authority of the book, but also to its market price…"
"“Ptolemy’s” Almagest begins (as natural for an 11th c. text) with what look like paraphrases of controversies from th…"
"So, in practice, Western history has used two standards of evidence for transmission: one ultra-lax standard of evide…"
"The Doctrine of Christian Discovery, which instigated the subsequent triple genocide in three continents of South and…"
"There is not the slightest doubt that every piece of empirical evidence can be explained away by one who wants to han…"