Did Mesopotamian scribes have algebra? Response

Reading about the difference between how ancient Babylonians communicated math compared to how we do now made me question what the value of our current, symbol heavy, system is. The main thing that I believe makes our current system useful is readability. So long as someone knows how notation and mathematical symbols are used, a problem that would be a dense word problem using rhetorical algebra can be simplified to a more readable and arguably more simple equation. However, the trade-off here is that as we move away from a rhetorical way of expressing math it can be easy to lose the context and motivation behind the math. I could however foresee a situation where this disadvantage could become useful. I think the loss of context could be made into an advantage in a teamwork context. For a more technically complicated project it could be useful to have someone who is able to solve the math once it has been symbolized but who doesn’t necessarily need to know the potentially technically complex context behind it.

That being said when I consider the differences between rhetorical algebra and our modern system that is heavily based on symbols from an educational lens, I find some problems with our modern system. The heavy use of symbols makes it easy for kids to memorize, not understand what they are supposed to do to solve a question. Because symbols can be almost entirely taken out of the original context of a problem it becomes easy for kids to focus on the steps they’ve memorized to complete a question and not on understanding what the question is about and how it relates to the math they are learning. In this way I can see how the ancient Babylonian system may have been better. Students who only ever worked with rhetorical algebra may have had a stronger understanding of the math they learnt. Despite this I still wouldn’t argue that a system that only uses rhetorical algebra is best. I think there are times when rhetorical algebra is preferable but also times where symbols are a powerful and useful tool.