10 W 19408, 76: Conclusion
It remains to consider the quadrilateral on the back side of 19408, 76.
Activity 9. Refer to Figure 10 to answer the following question.
Use the surveyors method to find the area of the quadrilateral on the back side of W 19408, 76. Do all of your work using System S and System A. Record your final answer using System A.
Unlike the front side of W 19408, 76, it is not possible for the quadrilateral to be a trapezoid. Figure 12 shows one potential shape this quadrilateral might take.
If we instead used modern technology to find its area, we would find it has an area roughly equal to 9452.1 iku gána.
Activity 10. You will need to have completed Activity 9 correctly to answer these questions.
- Convert your answer to Activity 9 into a modern base ten number of iku gána.
- What is the error of the approximation given by the surveyor’s method in this example, if the actual area is 9452.1 iku gána.? Remember that the error of an approximation is the difference between the approximation and the real value as a percentage of the real value.
We conclude that the surveyor’s method is not very good at approximating area of a field that is not roughly rectangular.
While W 19408 contains only four sets of numbers on each side, experts are confident it was meant as a mathematical problem intended to be solved using the surveyor’s method. Correctly answering Activity 9 shows us that both sides of W 19408 yield an answer of 1 šàr’u gána. The fact that both gave us the same round answer give strong evidence to this hypothesis.
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