Horse For Sale
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Fibonacci, also called Leonardo of Pisa or Leonardo Pisano (c. 1170-1250), is responsible for introducing to Europe the Hindu-Arabic numeration system that we use today. His Liber Abaci was published in 1202. Here is a problem from his book. Two men, having bezants*, found a horse for sale. As they both wished to buy it, the first said to the second, “If you will give me one third of your bezants, then I shall have the price of the horse.” And the other man proposed to have similarly the price of the horse if he would take one fourth of the first man’s bezants. The price of the horse, and the number of bezants, of each man are sought. *A bezant was a medieval Byzantine gold coin (The problem is taken from p. 22 in Devlin, Keith (2017). Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.) Note that from the problem we can infer that the first man has fewer bezants than the second man has. (Do you see why?) Try to solve the problem yourself before looking at the solution below! Lesson Index |