"But they then discovered something else, and... had to extend numbers a bit more. Suppose a farmer has a field and that field grows 100 cabbages. ...[T]he king wants to have a war so they need... 200 cabbages. How much bigger should my field be? ...It needs to have twice the area, and the area... is proportional to the square of the length of the field, so... how much bigger should the length of the field be, and the equation that you have to solve... is[W]e know the ns were interested in this problem because... a cuneiform tablet, which I believe is in the ... is... trying to solve this equation.... and... gives the answer. ...[T]hey tried to solve this using fractions and they... couldn't. There was no fraction which equaled the answer... and so they had to invent... what we call an irrational number to give a solution... 1.4142135623730950488... That's to 20 decimal places, and it goes on and on and on. ...[T]hese were numbers called s, and were originally invented for the tax man to work out how to double the area of fields."
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University of Cambridge alumniAcademics from the United KingdomMathematicians from the United KingdomEducators from the United Kingdom
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Christopher Budd (mathematician)
Christopher John Budd OBE (born 15 February 1960) is a British mathematician known especially for his contribution to non-linear differential equations and their applications in industry. He is currently Professor of Applied Mathematics at the , and was from 2016 to 2020.
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