Jiu zhang suanshu (Nine chapters on the mathematical art): An overview (Q1329640)

As its title indicates, this paper is a survey of a good part of the problems and methods found in the `Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art' (1st century A.D.), the famous Chinese mathematical classic which had a status equivalent to that of `Euclid's Elements of Geometry' in Greece, the Arabic World, and post-Renaissance Europe. The emphasis of the paper is on the calculation device known as counting-rods, which was dominant in China until the Yuan dynasty (1277-1367). Besides rendering into English many problems and the algorithms used for their solution, the paper shows how the rods were manipulated in elementary operations as well as for the resolution of a second degree equation, and for that of a linear system of three equations in three unknowns.