Reading Response Oct 7th-Babylonian Word Problem

 This is a fascinating article to read. I haven't thought about "pure'', "applied" and "practical" carefully and deeply even though these terms frequently appear in mathematics. Word problems are always my favorite part of my mathematic learning. In my opinion, the word problems are for students  practicing to solve the problem with the method in hand, but  more importantly, it educates students to connect to history and real-world and appreciate life. Take the Babylonian word problem as an example; it seems not applicable to our present real- world but it was applicable to the Babylonian's real- world by then. By reading and solving the word problems in ancient time, we can learn what their real life looks like and appreciate more why this type of problem was solved in a certain way. It helps us to extend the ideas and develop new methods applying to our real-life in the present. I agree that Greek mathematic maybe more practical than the Babylonian one but it was also 1500 years later. There is no doublt that Babylonian mathematical concepts were contributed to Greek practical mathematic. For example, from our presentation problem, we have learned  Egyptian methods, and develop it to modern methods and then extend the Egyptian method to find a generalization of this mathematical concept. This is a great process of refelctive learning.