Editing Chinese mathematics (section)

=== ''Book on Numbers and Computation'' ===
The ''[[Book on Numbers and Computation]]'' is approximately seven thousand characters in length, written on 190 bamboo strips.{{sfn|Dauben|2008}} It was discovered together with other writings in 1984 when [[archaeologist]]s opened a tomb at [[Zhangjiashan]] in [[Hubei]] province. From documentary evidence this tomb is known to have been closed in 186 BC, early in the Western [[Han dynasty]].{{sfn|Needham|1959}} While its relationship to the Nine Chapters is still under discussion by scholars, some of its contents are clearly paralleled there. The text of the ''Suan shu shu'' is however much less systematic than the Nine Chapters, and appears to consist of a number of more or less independent short sections of text drawn from a number of sources.{{sfn|Dauben|2008}}

The Book of Computations contains many perquisites to problems that would be expanded upon in The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art.{{sfn|Dauben|2008}} An example of the elementary mathematics in the ''Suàn shù shū'', the [[square root]] is approximated by using [[false position method]] which says to "combine the excess and deficiency as the divisor; (taking) the deficiency numerator multiplied by the excess denominator and the excess numerator times the deficiency denominator, combine them as the dividend."{{sfn|Dauben|2008}} Furthermore, The Book of Computations solves systems of two equations and two unknowns using the same false position method.{{sfn|Hart|2011|pages=11–85}}