Aug 23, 2009
Today's math problem: how to drown the Mohammedans.
For the last month I've been researching American K-12 textbooks and looking at how they depict immigrant groups, especially religious minorities. Today I found this gem, from an 18th-century public school textbook:
Fifteen Christians and 15 Turks bound at sea in one ship in a terrible storm, and the pilot declaring a necessity of casting one half of these persons into the sea, that the rest might be saved, they all agreed that the persons to be cast away should be set out by lot in this manner, viz., the 30 persons should be placed in a round form like a ring and then, beginning to count at one of the passengers and proceeding regularly every ninth person should be cast into the sea until of the 30 persons there remained only 15. The question is, how these 30 persons ought to be placed that the lot might fall infallibly upon the 15 Turks, and not upon any of the 15 Christians.
