# Problems from Another Time

Individual problems from throughout mathematics history, as well as articles that include problem sets for students.

A powerful, unvanquished, excellent black snake, 80 angulas in length, enters into a hole at the rate of 7 1/2 angulas in 5/14 of a day, and in the course of a day its tail grows 11/4 of an angula.
If I were to give 7 pennies to each beggar at my door, I would have 24 pennies left in my purse. How many beggars are there and how much money do I have?
A horse halving its speed every day runs 700 miles in 7 days.
A series of circles have their centers on an equilateral hyperbola and pass through its center. Show that their envelope is a lemniscate.
Given a wooden log of diameter 2 feet 5 inches from which a 7 inch thick board is to be cut, what is the maximum possible width of the board?
How a translation of Peano's counterexample to the 'theorem' that a zero Wronskian implies linear dependence can help your differential equations students
Rabbits and pheasants are put in a basket.
A man agreed to pay for 13 valuable houses worth $5000 each, what the last would amount to, reckoning 7 cents for the first, 4 times 7 cents for the second, and so on, increasing the price 4 times on each to the last. A father left$20,000 to be divided among his four sons ages 6, 8, 10, and 12 years respectively so that each share placed at 4 1/2 compounded interest should amount to the same value when its possessor becomes the age 21.
Discussion of 15th century French manuscript, with translation of its problems, including one with negative solutions