
Tartaglia, Cardano and Ferrari – 16th Century Mathematics - rsj_hn
https://storyofmathematics.com/16th_tartaglia.html
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azepoi
I can recommand this video on the subject: Mathologer -- 500 years of NOT
teaching THE CUBIC FORMULA. What is it they think you can't handle?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-KXStupwsc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-KXStupwsc)

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okintheory
As a working applied mathematician, I can tell you it's with pretty good
reason. I learnt this stuff in high school and never used it since. It is one
of the least useful things you could imagine. It is fun, though.

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pdm55
One never knows when one might need a particular bit of mathematics. I wrote a
mathematical model of DNA transcription events inside E. coli,
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425810/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5425810/).
For this, I needed the solution to a cubic equation. Thankfully, Cardano had
published the solution in the 15th century, and Wang had shown which was the
relevant root in more recent times,
[https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1016/0014-5...](https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1016/0014-5793%2895%2900062-E)

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chongli
Why not use Newton’s method? Your computer is using numerical approximations
for computing those roots anyway. The reason the cubic formula isn’t used is
because it’s very convoluted and it doesn’t solve any problems you couldn’t
solve with Newton’s method, unless you’re doing algebra and you need an exact
solution.

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q_revert
exact analytical solutions are nice as a check against any numerical solutions
imo. (checking the same calculations in multiple ways is handy for error
catching ime)

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blondin
first is italian :) hn will bash me for saying but the name reminds me of a
pasta brand or name

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perl4ever
Trivia from googling:

Tartaglia comes from _tartagliare_ , meaning to stutter.

"Tartaglia was not the family name. Tartaglia took it as a nickname, which
referred to his inability to talk clearly as a result of terrible wounds to
his head and jaw during the sack of Brescia in 1512"

[http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/tartalia.html](http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/tartalia.html)

