Comments on: The Third Bunch of Ways to Multiply http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/the-third-bunch-of-ways-to-multiply/ 12 tables, 24 chairs, and plenty of chalk Tue, 07 May 2013 17:42:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ξ http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/the-third-bunch-of-ways-to-multiply/#comment-4992 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:17:51 +0000 http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/?p=2579#comment-4992 Sue, yes, apparently they did. I think this method might become efficient if the numbers were several digits long and you had a really good table: looking up numbers would be faster than other kinds of calculations, and apparently some tables gave values not just to the nearest minute, but down to every second of a degree.

(I think there were also some calculations that came up in astronomy where you’d already be dealing with the sine or cosine of angles and you then had to multiply them, so in those specific cases these formulas would be much more natural to use.)

]]> By: Sue http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/the-third-bunch-of-ways-to-multiply/#comment-4902 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:50:49 +0000 http://threesixty360.wordpress.com/?p=2579#comment-4902 Dear goddess! Did people really do that?!

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