Almost Equal: The Method of Adequality from Diophantus to Fermat and Beyond

Perspectives on Science 21 (3):283-324 (2013)
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Abstract

Adequality, or παρισóτης (parisotēs) in the original Greek of Diophantus 1 , is a crucial step in Fermat’s method of finding maxima, minima, tangents, and solving other problems that a modern mathematician would solve using infinitesimal calculus. The method is presented in a series of short articles in Fermat’s collected works (1891, pp. 133–172). The first article, Methodus ad Disquirendam Maximam et Minimam 2 , opens with a summary of an algorithm for finding the maximum or minimum value of an algebraic expression in a variable A. For convenience, we will write such an expression in modern functional notation as f (a). 3 The algorithm can be broken up into six steps in the following way:Introduce an auxiliary ..

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