Charles

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Jan 11	comment	Babylonian tablets Nice tablet. But surely not a list of 59 squares or 32 cubes -- that looks like a single problem, so I don't think it's one of the tablets. But nice information, and +1 for that.
Jan 10	comment	Babylonian tablets That one is also quite a bit newer than the listed date, but it does have squares. I think (if you don't mind) I'm going to accept, just because I don't think a better answer is likely. Thank you for your time!
Jan 10	comment	Babylonian tablets (+1, of course, for a good answer to a hard question.)
Jan 10	comment	Babylonian tablets Hmm, right place and roughly the right time of discovery. But I thought Plimpton 322 was newer than 2000 BC? But perhaps they got that wrong.
Nov 6	comment	Why are the democracies of France, Israel and India rated “Flawed Democracies”? @Luke: Yes, heh. I probably meant the US, judging from the context.
Sep 2	comment	How much has U.S. currency inflated since 1792? I did an in-depth comparison maybe two years ago, comparing the median US income from ~1970 to the present day using the CPI-U vs. SS's inflation numbers. The SS inflation figures had the value of the ~1970 median income at something like $150,000 in present dollars, while the CPI-U had it as about $50,000. Compared to the present median income of ~$50,000 you ask whether the median income from 40 years ago would buy you (1) roughly the same as today, under the CPI-U, or (2) roughly three times what it would buy today, under SS. (My analysis was more complex but those are the basics.)
Aug 31	comment	Why are the democracies of France, Israel and India rated “Flawed Democracies”? The EIU scored France pretty close to how they scored France, with the US toward the bottom of "full democracies" and France toward the top of "flawed democracies". France scores the same or higher than the US in two out of their five categories: 'electoral process and pluralism' and 'civil liberties'.
Aug 31	comment	Any notable battles fought with steel vs. bronze weapons? I think that the consensus opinion on iron vs. bronze is that the former is just as good and much less expensive to produce, not that iron is actually better than bronze. Iron allowed armies to move from elites fighting elites to vast armies composed of people who could never afford bronze armor.
Aug 30	comment	How much has U.S. currency inflated since 1792? I didn't make any claims about the meaning of consumption bundles, only that it's factually incorrect to claim that the "purpose of CPI inflations is to indicate the long term cost of labour to capitalists". As for the SGS chart, it's quite wrong (thus my downvote to and comment on T.E.D.'s answer).
Aug 30	comment	How much has U.S. currency inflated since 1792? CPI does not measure the cost of labor to capitalists. Rather, it measures the cost of living for mid-low income urban consumers. But the answer is otherwise excellent, so +1.
Aug 30	comment	How much has U.S. currency inflated since 1792? -1: ShadowStats is extremely unreliable; their inflation statistics are easily shown to be nonsense. Further, the claim that the buying power was relatively stable for most of the history of the US is also incorrect, being perpetuated by the 'wrong' choice of axes: linear instead of logarithmic.
Aug 30	comment	Early history of prime numbers "From what has been said above it is evident that the sixteen siitras of Swamiji's Vedic Mathematics are his own compositions, and have nothing to do with the mathematics of the Vedic period. Although there is nothing Vedic in his book, Swlimiji designates his preface to the book as A Descriptive Prefactory Note on the Astounding Wonders of Ancient Indian Mathematics [...] The deceptive title of Swiimiji' s book and the attribution of the sixteen siitras to the Parisistas of the Atharvaveda etc., have confused and baffled the readers who have failed to recognize the real nature of the book"
Aug 30	comment	Early history of prime numbers That's a common misconception. Your second link deals with it explicitly:
Aug 30	comment	Early history of prime numbers Your second and third links are about Venkatraman's 20th-century book Vedic Mathematics which is several thousand years too new. The first link does mention prime numbers but unfortunately does not actually have information on where they appear in Vedic mathematics.
Aug 2	comment	Intersection Between Computer Science and History? I don't consider any of DNA analysis, computational linguistics, cliometrics, or econometrics to be computer science.
Aug 2	comment	When was Silver ever more valuable than Gold? I'm pretty sure this happened in ancient Rome for a short time, after great deals of gold plunder were brought to the city. I can't immediately remember which war this was in, sorry.
Jul 23	comment	Literacy in the classical world @LennartRegebro: I'm certainly not saying that it contradicts 5-10%, just that it seems to put a reasonable lower bound on the number. You couldn't easily argue 0.5%, for example.
Jul 22	comment	First recorded use of a traditional tombstone? Certainly these were common (for the well-off) in ancient Rome. I don't know how much further back they date.
Jul 22	comment	Early history of prime numbers The paper was especially useful, thanks!
Jul 22	comment	Literacy in the classical world @Luke: If what you're saying is that there's so much information out there that I should split this into several questions, I'd be happy to do that!