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Introduction:

You can learn more from solving one problem in many different ways than you can from solving many different problems, each in only one way. Islamic civilization in the middle ages, like all of Europe, had a dichotomy between theoretical and practical mathematics. Practical mathematics was the common subject, whereas theoretical and argumentative mathematics were reserved for specialists (Abedljaouad, 2006, p. 629). Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries, Islamic civilization produced a series of remarkable mathematicians. Among them was Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid Masud al-Kashi. Following this dichotomy, al-Kashi designed his book for use by students who were looking to apply mathematics in their professions. The book does not contain any theoretical proof for any problem, but it does contain methods for solution and correctness verification, such as performing the opposite operation to check a result, and the method of casting out nines to check whether the product, quotient, or root is correct.

Objective of the study:


1. Life History of Ghiyath Ai-Din Jamshid Mas'ud Al-Kashi

2. Contribution in Mathematics 3. Multiples Algorithm and Multiple Solutions 4. Law of Cosines 5. Fixed Point Iteration Method
6. Calculation of PI

1.

Life History of Jamshid al-Kashi

Al-Kashi was one of the best mathematicians in the Islamic world. He was born in 1380, in Kashan, in central Iran. This region was controlled by Tamurlane, better known as Timur, who was more interested in invading other areas than taking care of what he had. Due to this, al-Kashi lived in poverty during his childhood and the beginning years of his adulthood. He was born in Kashan which lies in a desert at the eastern foot of the Central Iranian Range. At the time that al-Kashi was growing up Timur (often known as Tamburlaine) was conquering large regions. He had proclaimed himself sovereign and restorer of the Mongol empire at Samarkand in 1370 and, in 1383, Timur began his conquests in Persia with the capture of Herat. Timur died in 1405 and his empire was divided between his two sons, one of whom was Shah Rokh. While Timur was undertaking his military campaigns, conditions were very difficult with widespread poverty. al-Kashi lived in poverty, like so many others at this time, and devoted himself to astronomy and mathematics while moving from town to town. Conditions improved markedly when Shah Rokh took over after his father's death. He brought economic prosperity to the region and strongly supported artistic and intellectual life. With the changing atmosphere, al-Kashi's life also improved markedly. The first event in al-Kashi's life which we can date accurately is his observation of an eclipse of the moon which he made in Kashan on 2 June 1406. It is reasonable to assume that al-Kashi remained in Kashan where he worked on astronomical texts. He was certainly in his home town on 1 March 1407 when he completed Sullam Al-sama the text of which has survived. The full title of the work means The Stairway of Heaven, on Resolution of Difficulties Met by Predecessors in the Determination of Distances and Sizes (of the heavenly bodies). At this time it was necessary for scientists to obtain patronage from their kings, princes or rulers. Al-Kashi played this card to his advantage and brought himself into favour in the new era where patronage of the arts and sciences became popular. His Compendium of the Science of Astronomy written during 1410-11 was dedicated to one of the descendants of the ruling Timurid dynasty. Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, is one of the oldest cities of Central Asia. The city became the capital of Timur's empire and Shah Rokh made his own son, Ulugh Beg, ruler of the city.
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Ulugh Beg, himself a great scientist, began to build the city into a great cultural centre. It was to Ulugh Beg that Al-Kashi dedicated his important book of astronomical tables Khaqani Zij which was based on the tables of Nasir al-Tusi. In the introduction al-Kashi says that without the support of Ulugh Beg he could not have been able to complete it. In this work there are trigonometric tables giving values of the sine function to four sexagesimal digits for each degree of argument with differences to be added for each minute. There are also tables which give transformations between different coordinate systems on the celestial sphere, in particular allowing ecliptic coordinates to be transformed into equatorial coordinates. The Khaqani Zij also contains :... detailed tables of the longitudinal motion of the sun, the moon, and the planets. Al-Kashi also gives the tables of the longitudinal and latitudinal parallaxes for certain geographical latitudes, tables of eclipses, and tables of the visibility of the moon. Al-Kashi had certainly found the right patron in Ulugh Beg since he founded a university for the study of theology and science at Samarkand in about 1420 and he sought out the best scientists to help with his project. Ulugh Beg invited Al-Kashi to join him at this school of learning in Samarkand, as well as around sixty other scientists including Qadi Zada. There is little doubt that al-Kashi was the leading astronomer and mathematician at Samarkand and he was called the second Ptolemy by an historian writing later in the same century. Letters which al-Kashi wrote in Persian to his father, who lived in Kashan, have survived. These were written from Samarkand and give a wonderful description of the scientific life there. In 1424 Ulugh Beg began the construction of an observatory in Samarkand and, although the letters by al-Kashi are undated they were written at a time when construction of the observatory had begun. The contents of one of these letters has only recently been published. In the letters al-Kashi praises the mathematical abilities of Ulugh Beg but of the other scientists in Samarkand, only Qadi Zada earned his respect. Ulugh Beg led scientific meetings where problems in astronomy were freely discussed. Usually these problems were too difficult for all except al-Kashi and Qadi Zada and on a couple of occasions only al-Kashi succeeded. It is clear that al-Kashi was the best scientist and closest collaborator of Ulugh Beg at Samarkand and, despite al-Kashi's ignorance of the correct court behaviour and lack of polished manners,
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he was highly respected by Ulugh Beg. After Al-Kashi's death, Ulugh Beg described him as (see for example :... a remarkable scientist, one of the most famous in the world, who had a perfect command of the science of the ancients, who contributed to its development, and who could solve the most difficult problems. Although al-Kashi had done some fine work before joining Ulugh Beg at Samarkand, his best work was done while in that city. He produced his Treatise on the Circumference in July 1424, a work in which he calculated 2 to nine sexagesimal places and translated this into sixteen decimal places. This was an achievement far beyond anything which had been obtained before, either by the ancient Greeks or by the Chinese (who achieved 6 decimal places in the 5th century). It would be almost 200 years before van Ceulen surpassed Al-Kashi's accuracy with 20 decimal places. Al-Kashi's most impressive mathematical work was, however, The Key to Arithmetic which he completed on 2 March 1427. The work is a major text intended to be used in teaching students in Samarkand, in particular al-Kashi tries to give the necessary mathematics for those studying astronomy, surveying, architecture, accounting and trading. The authors of describe the work as follows:In the richness of its contents and in the application of arithmetical and algebraic methods to the solution of various problems, including several geometric ones, and in the clarity and elegance of exposition, this voluminous textbook is one of the best in the whole of medieval literature; it attests to both the author's erudition and his pedagogical ability. Dold-Samplonius discussed several aspects of al-Kashi's Key to Arithmetic. For example the measurement of the muqarnas refers to a type of decoration used to hide the edges and joints in buildings such as mosques and palaces. The decoration resembles a stalactite and consists of three-dimensional polygons, some with plane surfaces, and some with curved surfaces. Al-Kashi uses decimal fractions in calculating the total surface area of types of muqarnas. The qubba is the dome of a funerary monument for a famous person. Al-Kashi finds good methods to approximate the surface area and the volume of the shell forming the dome of the qubba.

Rashed puts al-Kashi's important contribution into perspective. He shows that the main advances brought in by al-Kashi are:(1) The analogy between both systems of fractions; the sexagesimal and the decimal systems. (2) The usage of decimal fractions no longer for approaching algebraic real numbers, but for real numbers such as . The last work by al-Kashi was The Treatise on the Chord and Sine which may have been unfinished at the time of his death and then completed by Qadi Zada. In this work alKashi computed sin 1 to the same accuracy as he had computed in his earlier work. He also considered the equation associated with the problem of trisecting an angle, namely a cubic equation. He was not the first to look at approximate solutions to this equation since al-Biruni had worked on it earlier. However, the iterative method proposed by al-Kashi was :... one of the best achievements in medieval algebra. ... But all these discoveries of al-Kashi's were long unknown in Europe and were studied only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by ... historians of science.... Let us end with one final comment on the al-Kashi's work in astronomy. We mentioned earlier the astronomical tables Khaqani Zij produced by al-Kashi. It is worth noting that Ulugh Beg also produced astronomical tables and sine tables, and it is almost certain that these tables were based on al-Kashi's tables and almost certainly produced with al-Kashi's help.

2. Contribution in Mathematics:
Al-Kshs best-known work is Mift al- isb (1427), a veritable encyclopedia of elementary mathematics intended for an extensive range of students; it also considers the requirements of calculatorsastronomers. land surveyors, architects, clerks, and merchants. In the richness of its contents and in the application of arithmetical and algebraic methods to the solution of various problems, including several geometric ones, and in the clarity and elegance of exposition, this voluminous textbook is one of the best in the whole of medieval literature; it attests to both the authors erudition and his pedagogic ability.20 Because of its high quality the Mift al- isb was often recopied and served as a manual for hundreds of years; a compendium of it was also used. The books title indicates that arithmetic was viewed as the key to the solution of every kind of problem which can be reduced to calculation, and al-Ksh defined arithmetic as the science of rules of finding numerical unknowns with the aid of corresponding known quantities.21 The Mift al- isb is divided into five books preceded
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by an introduction: On the Arithmetic of Integers, On the Arithmetic of Fractions, On the Computation of the Astronomers(on sexagesimal arithmetic), On the Measurement of Plane Figures and Bodies, and On the Solution of Problems by Means of Algebra [linear and quadratic equations] and of the Rule of Two False Assumptions, etc. The work comprises many interesting problems and carefully analyzed numerical examples. In the first book of the Mift , al-Ksh describes in detail a general method of extracting roots of integers. The integer part of the root is obtained by means of what is now called the RuffiniHorner method. If the root is irrational, (a and r are integers), the fractional part of the root is calculated according to the approximate formula
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Al-Ksh himself

expressed all rules of computation in words, and his algebra is always purely rhetorical. In this connection he gives the general rule for raising a binomial to any natural power and the additive rule for the successive determination of binomial coefficients; and he constructs the so-called Pascals triangle (for n = 9). The same methods were presented earlier in the Jmi l- isb bi takht wa - tuzb (Arithmetic by Means of Board and Dust) of a l l Nasr al-Din al-Ts (1265). The origin of these methods is unknown. It is possible that they were at least partly developed by al-Khayym the influence of Chinese algebra is also quite plausible.23 Noteworthy in the second and the third book is the doctrine of decimal fractions, used previously by al-Ksh in his Risla al-muhtyya. It was not the first time that decimal fractions appeared in an Arabic mathematical work; they are in the Kitb al-fusl fi lhisb al-Hindi (Treatise of Arithmetic) of al Uldis (mid-tenth century) and were used occasionally also by Chinese scientists.24 But only al-Ksh introduced the decimal fractions methodically, with a view to establishing a system of fractions in which (as in the sexagesimal system) all operations would be carried out in the same manner as with integers. It was based on the commonly used decimal numeration, however, and therefore accessible to those who were not familiar with the sexagesimal arithmetic of the astronomers. Operations with finite decimal fractions are explained in detail, but al-Ksh does not mention the phenomenon of periodicity. To denote decimal fractions, written on the same line with the integer, he sometimes separated the integer by a vertical line or wrote in the orders above the figures; but generally he named only the lowest power that determined all the others. In the second half of the fifteenth century and in the sixteenth century al-Kshs decimal fractions found a certain circulation in Turkey, possibly through Al Qshj, who had worked with him at Samarkand and who sometime after the assassination of Ulugh Bg and the fall of the Byzantine empire settled in Constantinople. They also appear occasionally in an anonymous Byzantine collection of problems from the fifteenth century which was brought to Vienna in 1562. It is also possible that al-Kshs ideas had some influence on the propagation of decimal fractions in Europe.
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In the fifth book al-Ksh mentions in passing that for the fourth-degree equations he had discovered the method for the determination of unknowns in. . . seventy problems which had not been touched upon by either ancients or contemporaries. He also expressed his intention to devote a separate work to this subject, but it seems that he did not complete this research. Al-Kshs theory should be analogous to the geometrical theory of cubic equations developed much earlier by Abul-Jd Muhammad ibn Laith, al-Khayym (eleventh century), and their followers: the positive roots of fourth-degree equations were constructed and investigated as coordinates of points of intersection of the suitable pairs of conics. It must be added that actually there are only sixty-five (not seventy) types of fourth-degree equations reducible to the forms considered by Muslim mathematicians, that is, the forms having terms with positive coefficients on both sides of the equation. Only a few cases of fourth-degree equations were studied before al-Ksh. Al-Kshs greatest mathematical achievements are Risla al-muhitiyya and Risla alwatar wa l-jaib, both written in direct connection with astronomical researches and especially in connection with the increased demands for more precise trigonometrical tables. At the beginning of the Risla al-mu t yya al-Ksh points out that all approximate values of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, that is, of , calculated by his predecessors gave a very great (absolute) error in the circumference and even greater errors in the computation of the areas of large circles, Al-Ksh tackled the problem of a more accurate computation of this ratio, which he considered to be irrational, with an accuracy surpassing the practical needs of astronomy, in terms of the then-usual standard of the size of the visible universe or of the sphere of fixed stars.27 For that purpose he assumed, as had the Iranian astronomer Qutb al-Din al-Shrz (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries), that the radius of this sphere is 70,073.5 times the diameter of the earth. Concretely, al-Ksh posed the problem of calculating the said ratio with such precision that the error in the circumference whose diameter is equal to 600,000 diameters of the earth will be smaller than the thickness of a horses hair. Al-Ksh used the following old Iranian units of measurement: I parasang (about 6 kilometers) = 12,000 cubits, 1 cubit = 24 inches (or fingers), 1 inch = 6 widths of a medium-size grain of barley, and I width of a barley grain = 6 thicknesses of a horses hair. The great-circle circumference of the earth is considered to be about 8,000 parasangs, so al-Kshs requirement is equivalent to the computation of with an error no greater than 0.5 10 -17. This computation was accomplished by means of elementary operations, including the extraction of square roots, and the technique of reckoning is elaborated with the greatest care. Al-Kshs measurement of the circumference is based on a computation of the perimeters of regular inscribed and circumscribed polygons, as had been done by Archimedes, but it follows a somewhat different procedure. All calculations are performed in sexagesimal
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numeration for a circle with a radius of 60. Al-Kshs fundamental theoremin modern notationis as follows: In a circle with radius r, where crd is the chord of the arc and < 180. Thus al-Ksh applied here the trigonometry of chords and not the trigonometric lines themselves. If = 2 and d = 2, then al-Kshs theorem may be written trigonometrically as which is found in the work of J. H. Lambert (1770). The chord of 60 is equal to r, and so it is possible by means of this theorem to calculate successively the chords c 1, c 2, c 3. . . . of the arcs 120, 150, 165, in general the value of the chord c n of the arc will be . The chord c n being known, we may, according to Pythagorean theorem, find the side of the regular inscribed 3 2n -sided polygon, for this side a n is also the chord of the supplement of the arc n up to 180. The side b n of a similar circumscribed polygon is determined by the proportion b n : a n = r: h, where h is the apothem of the inscribed polygon. In the third section of his treatise al-Ksh ascertains that the required accuracy will be attained in the case of the regular polygon with 3228 = 805, 306, 368 sides. He resumes the computation of the chords in twenty-eight extensive tables; he verifies the extraction of the roots by squaring and also by checking by 59 (analogous to the checking by 9 in decimal numeration); and he establishes the number of sexagesimal places to which the values used must be taken. We can concisely express the chords c n and the sides a n by formulas and where the number of radicals is equal to the index n. In the sixth section, by multiplying a28 by 3228, one obtains the perimeter p28 of the inscribed 3228-sided polygon and then calculates the perimeter p 28 of the corresponding similar circumscribed polygon. Finally the best approximation for 2 r is accepted as the arithmetic mean whose sexagesimal value for r = 1 is 6 16I 59II 28III 1IV 34V 51VI 46VIII 50IX, where all places are correct. In the eighth section al-Ksh translates this value into the decimal fraction 2= 6.2831853071795865, correct to sixteen decimal places. This superb result far surpassed all previous determinations of . The decimal approximation 3.14 corresponds to the famous boundary values found by Archimedes, Ptolemy used the sexagesimal value 3 8I 30II ( 3.14166), and the results of alKshs predecessors in the Islamic countries were not much better. The most accurate value of obtained before al-Ksh by the Chinese scholar Tsu Ch ung- chih (fifth century) was correct to six decimal places. In Europe in 1597 A. van Roomen approached al-Kshs result by calculating to fifteen decimal places; later Ludolf van Ceulen calculated to twenty and then to thirty-two places (published 1615). In his Risla al-walar wa l-jaib al-Ksh again calculates the value of sin 1 to ten correct sexagesimal places; the best previous approximations, correct to four places, were obtained in the tenth century by Abul-Waf and Ibn Ynus. Al-Ksh derived the equation for the trisection of an angle, which is a cubic equation of the type px = q + x 3or, as the Arabic mathematicians would say, Things are equal to the cube and the number. The
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trisection equation had been known in the Islamic countries since the eleventh century; one equation of this type was solved approximately by al-Bn to determine the side of a regular nonagon, but this method remains unknown to us. Al-Ksh proposed an original iterative method of approximate solution, which can be summed up as follows: Assume that the equation possesses a very small positive root x; for the first approximation, take ; for the second approximation, ; for the third, , and generally x 0 = 0. It may be proved that this process is convergent in the neighborhood of values of . AlKsh used a somewhat different procedure: he obtained x 1 by dividing q by p as the first sexagesimal place of the desired root, then calculated not the approximations x 2, x 3, . . . themselves but the corresponding corrections, that is, the successive sexagesimal places of x. The starting point of al-Kshs computation was the value of sin 3, which can be calculated by elementary operations from the chord of 72 (the side of a regular inscribed pentagon) and the chord of 60. The sin 1 for a radius of 60 is obtained as a root of the equation The sexagesimal value of sin 1 for a radius of 60 is 1 2I 49II 43III 11IV 14V 44VI 16VII 26VIII 17IX; and the corresponding decimal fraction for a radius of 1 is 0.017452406437283571. All figures in both cases are correct. Al-Kshs method of numerical solution of the trisection equation, whose variants were also presented by Ulugh Bg, Qdi Zde, and his grandson Mamd ibn Muammad Mrm Cheleb (who worked in Turkey), requires a relatively small number of operations and shows the exactness of the approximation at each stage of the computation. Doubtless it was one of the best achievements in medieval algebra. H. Hankel has written that this method concedes nothing in subtlety or elegance to any of the methods of approximation discovered in the West after Vite. But all these discoveries of al-Kshss were long unknown in Europe and were studied only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by such historians of science as Sdillot, Hankel, Luckey, Kary-Niyazov, and Kennedy.

3.

Multiple Algorithms and Multiple Solution

Five different multiplication algorithms are given in Treatise I, Chapter III. Here we describe two of them briefly without all the details given by al-Kashi. The first one using a lattice
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contains the as

as

many rows as of multiplicand many columns number of

number the

digits, and as

multiplier digits; then we divide each cell diagonally into two triangles. We place the digits of the multiplicand above the columns and the digits of the multiplier beside the rows. Then we perform the multiplication and we put the ones of each product in the lower triangle and the tens in the upper triangle. After that we add diagonally. For example, the multiplication of 7806 by 175 is represented by

Figure 1: multiplication process represented by lattice from al-Nabulsi (1977, p.57). Another way: we start by multiplying the first digit from the multiplier by every digit from the multiplicand, and we place the ones of the second product under the tens of the first product and the ones of the third under the tens of the second, and so on. Then we multiply the second digit from the multiplier by every digit from the multiplicand, and we place the ones of the first product above the tens of the first product of the first digit, then we put the ones of the second product above the tens of the second product of the first digit, and so on. We do that for all digits. The multiplication of 358 by 624 is represented by the following:

Figure 2: multiplication process representation


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from al-Nabulsi (1977, p. 59).

Chapter IV in Treatise V is devoted to examples. Section I contains 25 general word problems, Section II discusses seven word problems in inheritance solved algebraically with extensive fraction arithmetic, and Section III is devoted to solving word problems geometrically. The sixth problem in Section I is: A piece of jewellery is made from gold and pearl. Its weight is three methqals3 The Key to Arithmetic introduces four different methods to solve this problem. In modern symbols these become and its price is twenty-four dinars. The price of one methqal of gold is five dinars, and of pearl is fifteen dinars. We want to know the weight of each kind. By algebra: let be the gold weight. Then the pearl weight becomes 3. The pearl price =15(3)=4515 The jewellery price =4515+5=4510=24 We get =2.1 methqals, the gold weight. Then the pearl weight is 0.9 methqal. In this first approach, an algebraic equation is formulated with the gold weight as unknown, and then it is solved by a standard use of algebra. Chapter III in Treatise V consists of fifty rules for ratios, geometry, algebra, number theory, and other topics. One of al-Kashis methods to solve word problems is using these rules; he refers to this as maftoohat ( .(

By maftoohat: the gold weight is (translating the original Arabic words to mathematical symbols)

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In this second approach al-Kashi considers the jewellery as made entirely from pearl; then the price is increased by 21 dinars, and then he divides this increase by the difference between the two prices, to get the gold weight. Another way: the pearl weight is

Then the gold weight is 2.1 methqals. Similarly, in this third approach, al-Kashi supposes that the jewellery is made entirely from gold, and he proceeds as in the second way. By geometry: We represent the problem as in the following picture.

Figure 6: Geometric illustration from al-Nabulsi (1977, p. 500). This last approach presents a way to think geometrically about this problem, by considering weight and price magnitudes represented by sides of a rectangle, and the product of these magnitudes is the rectangle area.

4. Law of Cosines and Jamshid al-Kashi


The law of cosines may be used for calculating the length of one side of a triangle when the angle of the opposite this side, and the length of the other two sides, are known. The law may be expressed as c 2 = a2 + b 2 - 2abcos(C), where a, b, and c are triangle side lengths and C is an angle between sides a and b.
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Because of its generality, the application of the law ranges from land surveying to calculating the flight paths of aircraft. Notice how the law of cosines becomes the Pythagorean Theorem c 2 = a2 + b 2 for right triangles, when C becomes 90 and the cosine becomes zero. Also note that if all three side lengths of a triangle are known, we can use the law of cosines to compute the angles of a triangle. Euclid's Elements (300 B.C.) contains the seeds of concepts that lead to the law of cosines. In the fifteenth century, the Persian astronomer and mathematician al-Kashi provided accurate trigonometric tables and expressed the theorem in a form suitable for modem usage. French mathematician Franois Viete discovered the law independently of al-Kashi. In French, the law of cosines is named Theoreme d'Al-Kashi, after al-Kashi's unification of existing works on the subject.

Figure: Triangle. The angles , , and are respectively opposite the sides a, b, and c. In trigonometry, the law of cosines (also known as the cosine formula or cosine rule) is a statement about a general triagnle that relates the lengths of its sides to the cosine if one of its angles. Using notation as in Fig., the law of cosines states that

where denotes the angle contained between sides of lengths a and b and opposite the side of length c. The law of cosines generalizes the Pythagorean theorem which holds only for right triangles: if the angle is a right angle (of measure 900or /2 radians), then cos() = 0, and thus the law of cosines reduces to

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The law of cosines is useful for computing the third side of a triangle when two sides and their enclosed angle are known, and in computing the angles of a triangle if all three sides are known. By changing which sides of the triangle play the roles of a, b, and c in the original formula, one discovers that the following two formulas also state the law of cosines:

Application of Law of Cosines: An Example


Two cars leave a city at the same time and travel along straight highways that differ in direction by 800. One car averages 60 miles per hour and the other averages 50 miles per hour. How far apart will the cars be after 90 minutes? Solution: Determine how far each car has traveled during the 90 minutes d1 = distance of car 1 d2 = distance of car 2 r1 = rate of car 1 = 60 mph r2 = rate of car 2 = 50 mph t = time traveled = 90 minutes = 1.5 hours d1 = r1 t , d2 = r2 t d1 = (60 mph) (1.5 hrs), d2 = (50 mph) (1.5 hrs) d1 = 90 mi, d2 = 75 mi Draw diagram of situation

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Calculation: c2= a2+b2-2abcosc c2= (75)2+ (90)2-27590cos800 c2=11380.6224 c=106.68 107 mi

5. Fixed Point Iteration Method


He wrote The Reckoners Key which summarizes arithmetic and contains work on algebra and geometry. In another work, alKashi applied the method now known as fixed-point iteration to solve a cubic equation having We define the iteration as a root. Generally, for an equation of the form x = f(x).

where x0 is some initial guess. If the iterations converge, then it must be a solution of the equation. Such a method is called fixed point iteration. Another more famous fixed point iteration coming much later is Newtons Method. He also worked on solutions of systems of equations and developed methods for finding the nth root of a number Horners method today. Fixed point iteration method Example: Finding roots of Solution: Here f =

We Know according to fixed point method

Now, we assume that the first point is 10.

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Therefore, When, n=0: n=1: n=2: n=3: n=4: After that when we take n=5 the value of point. Hence the one of the solution of will also be 5.0000. That is we got a converge

is 5.0000.

In similar way we can find another solution of the equation.

6. Calculation of PI
Al-Ksh wrote his most important works in Samarkand. In July 1424 he completed Risla al-muitiyya (The Treatise on the Circumference), masterpiece of computational technique resulting in the determination of 2 to sixteen decimal places. At the beginning of the Risla al-mutyya al-Ksh points out that all approximate values of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, that is, of , calculated by his predecessors gave a very great (absolute) error in the circumference and even greater errors in the computation of the areas of large circles, Al-Ksh tackled the problem of a more accurate computation of this ratio, which he considered to be irrational, with an accuracy surpassing the practical needs of astronomy, in terms of the then-usual standard of the size of the visible universe or of the sphere of fixed stars. For that purpose he assumed, as had the Iranian astronomer Qutb al-Din al-Shrz (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries), that the radius of this sphere is 70,073.5 times the diameter of the earth. Concretely, al-Ksh posed the problem of calculating the said ratio with such precision that the error in the circumference whose diameter is equal to 600,000 diameters of the earth will be smaller than the thickness of a horses hair. Al-Ksh used the following Old Iranian units of measurement:
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1 parasang (about 6 kilometers) = 12,000 cubits, 1 cubit = 24 inches (or fingers), 1 inch = 6 widths of a medium-size grain of barley, I width of a barley grain = 6 thicknesses of a horses hair. The great-circle circumference of the earth is considered to be about 8,000 parasangs, so al-Kshs requirement is equivalent to the computation of with an error no greater than the width of a horses hair. This computation was accomplished by means of elementary operations, including the extraction of square roots, and the technique of reckoning is elaborated with the greatest care. Al-Kshs measurement of the circumference is based on a computation of the perimeters of regular inscribed and circumscribed polygons, as had been done by Archimedes, but it follows a somewhat different procedure. Al-Kashi applied his fundamental theorem to calculate successively the value of the chord cn of the arc n0 = 180o 360o/3(2n) (where n 0). From his fundamental theorem al-Kashi obtained the identity

From here he found the lengths of the sides of inscribed and circumscribed regular polygons each with 3(2n) sides (n 1), in a given circle. Then he determined the number of sides of the inscribed regular polygon in a circle whose radius is six hundred times the radius of the Earth in a such a way that the difference between the circumference of the circle and the perimeter of the inscribed regular polygon in this circle will become less than the width of a horses hair. Al Kashi continued to use his fundamental theorem to calculate the value of , correct to 16 decimal places, using inscribed and circumscribed polygons, each with 3(228) = 805,306,368 sides. The chord of 60 is equal to r, and so it is possible by means of this theorem to calculate successively the chords c1, c2, c3. . . of the arcs 120, 150, 165, in general the value of the chord cn of the arc will be . The chord cn being known, we may, according to Pythagorean Theorem, find the side of the regular inscribed 3 2n sided polygon, for this side an is also the chord of the supplement of the arc n up to 180. The side bn of a similar circumscribed polygon is determined by the proportion bn: an = r: h, where h is the apothem of
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the inscribed polygon. In the third section of his treatise al-Ksh ascertains that the required accuracy will be attained in the case of the regular polygon with 3228 = 805, 306, 368 sides. He resumes the computation of the chords in twenty-eight extensive tables; he verifies the extraction of the roots by squaring and also by checking by 59 (analogous to the checking by 9 in decimal numeration); and he establishes the number of sexagesimal places to which the values used must be taken. We can concisely express the chords cn and the sides an by formulas where the number of radicals is equal to the index n. In the sixth section, by multiplying a28 by 3228, one obtains the perimeter p28 of the inscribed 3228 sided polygon and then calculates the perimeter p28 of the corresponding similar circumscribed polygon. Finally the best approximation for 2 r is accepted as the arithmetic mean whose sexagesimal value for r = 1 is 6 16I 59II 28III 1IV 34V 51VI 46VII14VIII 50IX, where all places are correct. In the eighth section alKsh translates this value into the decimal fraction 2= 6.2831853071795865, correct to sixteen decimal places. This superb result far surpassed all previous determinations of .

Name of books by al-Ksh


I. Original Works. Al-Kshs writings were collected as Majm (Collection; Teheran, 1888), an ed. of the matematicheskie issledoveniya, 7 (1954), 9439, Russian trans. by B. A. Rosenfeld and commentaries by Rosenfeld and A. P. Youschkevitch; and Klyuch arifmeti. Traktat of okruzhnosti ( The Key of Arithmetic. A Treatise on Circumference), trans. bty B. A. Rosenfeld, ed. by V. S. Segal and A. P. Youschkevitch, commentaries by Rosenfeld and Youschkevitch, with photorepros. of Arabic MSS. His individual works are the following: 1. Mift al- isb (The Key of Arithmetic) or Mift al- ussb fi ilm al- isb (The Key of Reckoners in the Science of Arithmetic). Arabic MSS in Leningrad, Berlin, Paris, Leiden, London, Istanbul, Teheran, Meshed, Patna, Peshawar, and Rampur, the most important being Leningrad, Publ. Bibl. 131; Leiden, Univ. 185; Berlin, Preuss. Bibl. 5992 and 2992a, and Inst. Gesch. Med. Natur. 1.2; Paris, BN 5020; and London, BM 419 and India Office 756. There is a litho. ed. of another MS (Teheran, 1889). Russian trans. are in Matematicheskie traktaty, pp. 13326; and Klyuch arifmetiki, pp. 7262, with photorepro. of Leiden MS on pp. 428568, There is an ed. of the Leiden MS with commentaries (Cairo,

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1968). See also P. Luckey, Die Ausziehung dos n-ten Wurzel... and Die Rechenkunst bei amid b. Mas al-Kas... ud 2. Risal-mu it yya (Treatise on the Circumference; 1424). Arabic MSS are in Istanbul, Teheran, and Meshed, the most important being Istanbul, Ask. mze. 756. There is an ed. of another MS in Majm and one of the Istanbul MS with German trans. in P. Luckey, Der Lehrbrief ber den Kreisumfang von Gamd b. Mas d al-Ki . Russian trans. are in Matematicheskie trakaty, pp.327379; and in Klyuch arifmetiki, pp. 263308, with photorepro . of Istanbul MS pp. 338426. 3. Talkhis al-Miftah (Compendium of the Key). Arabic MSS in London, Tashkent, Istanbul, Baghdad, Mosul, Teheran, Tabriz, and Patna, the most important being London, India Office 75; and Tashkent, Inst. vost. 2245. 4. Risla dar shar -i lt-i ras d (Treatise on the Explanation of Observational Instruments; 1416). Persian MSS in Leiden and Teharan, the more important being Leiden, Univ. 327/12, which has been pub. as a supp. to V. V. Bartold, Ulugbek i ego uremya; and E. S. Kennedy, Al-Kshis Treatise on Astronomical Observation Instruments, pp. 99, 101, 103. There isd an English trans. in Kennedy, Al-Kshs Treatise..., pp. 98104; and a Russian trans. in V. A. Shishkin, Observatoriya Ulugebeka i ee issledovanie, pp. 9194. 5. Mukhtas a r dar lim-i hay at (Compendium on the Science of Astronomy) or Risla dar hay at ( Treatise on Astronomy; 14101411). 6. Zij-i Khaqni f takml-i Zij-i lkhn (Khaqni Zij perfection of lkhn Zij 1413 1414). 7. Risla al-watar wa l-jaib (Treatise on the Chord and Sine). There is an ed. of a MS in Majm . 8. Ilka t an-Nuzha (Supplement to the Excursion 1427). There is an ed. of a MS in Majm . 9. Sullam al-sam fi all ishkl waqa a li l-muqaddim fi l-ab d walajrm ( The Stairway of Heven, on Resolution of Difficulties Met by Predecessors in the Determination of Distances and Sizes; 1407).
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10. Nuzha al- adiq fi kayfiyya s a nsa al-la al-musamm bi t a baq al-mant i q (The Garden Excursion,; on the Method of Construction of the Instrument Called Plate of Heavens; 1416). Arabic MSS are in London, Dublin, and Bombay, the moist important being London, India Office Ross 210.

Limitation of our work:


1. The fundamentals books are not available at English version.
2. The research work about al-Kashi are not free accessible.

3. Al-Kashi is an astronomer so there are many calculations are complex and not easy to describe by easy process such in pie calculation he uses the sexagesimal system.

Conclusion

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