One day, Al-Khwarizmi was riding a camel laden down with algebraic manuscripts to the holy city of Mecca. He saw three young men crying at an oasis. “My children, why areyou crying?” he enquired. “Our father, upon his death, instructed us to divide his 17 camels as follows: ‘To my oldest son I leave half of my camels, my second son shall haveone-third of my camels, and my youngest son is to have one-ninth of my camels.’” “What, then, is your problem?” Al-Khwarizmi asked. “We have been to school and learned that 17 is a prime number that is, divisible only by one and itself and cannot be divided by two or three or nine. Since we love our camels, we cannot divide them exactly,” they answered. Al-Khwarizmi thought for a while and asked, “Will it help if I offer my camel andmake the total 18?” “No, no, no,” they cried. “You are on your way to Mecca, and you needyour camel.” “Go ahead, have my camel, and divide the 18 camels amongst yourselves,” he said, smiling. So the eldest took one-half of 18 — or nine camels. The second took one-third of 18 — or six camels. The youngest took one-ninth of 18 — or two camels. After the division, one camel was left: Al-Khwarizmi’s camel, as the total number of camels divided among the sons (nine plus six plus two) equaled 17. Then Al-Khwarizmi asked, “Now, can I have my camel back?” These young men had information about prime numbers, but they lacked the wisdom to use the information effectively. It is the manipulation of information to accomplish seemingly impossible purposes that defines true wisdom. Today, we have ten billion pages of information posted on the Internet — more than enough to keep us busy the rest of our lives, and new information is being added daily. More information has been created in the last 100 years than in all of the previous 100,000 years combined. We need the wisdom to sift through and convert these billions of pages into information riches. Thegenius of Al-Khwarizmi was not in his mathematical wizardry or even his book knowledge: It was in his experiential knowledge — his big-picture, right-brain thinking; creativity; innovation; and wisdom. It was his wisdom to add a camel to make the total 18 and still get his camel back.


source: http://davennady..in/2013/12/a-short-mathematical-story.html