8 comments by 4 or more people

1. Steven Jones

   It was a donation, so didn’t cost anything to anyone other than poets. But it was made from about 40 talents of gold, which I’ve no idea how much that was worth in the middle ages. Also a talent is not roughly one kilogram according to my [wiki] sources.

   12 Oct 2009, 12:33

2. Peter Dunn

   Ah pedantry so useful for generating blog posts but not for solving the intended fun maths problem

   If you do actually want to solve the maths problem though just assume the good Professor said “How much did the statue cost in total in terms total number of talents of gold donated at that time”.

   Peter Dunn

   12 Oct 2009, 12:42

3. Steven Jones

   Ah okay, cost to the poets. Fair enough.

   Pedantry! He is a mathematician, he should expect pedantry!

   12 Oct 2009, 12:46

4. Iain Wallace

   Agree with Steven, 40 talents but the question doesn’t seem to make sense. Wolfram Alpha reckons it would be worth £25.73M though http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=40+talents+of+gold

   Also, the ?hideComments option doesn’t do anything to the page if you forbid javascript by default :/

   12 Oct 2009, 12:46

5. Mathew Mannion

   Also, the ?hideComments option doesn’t do anything to the page if you forbid javascript by default :/

   Well, it’s just a bit of Javascript to complement the existing system, which doesn’t actually have the capability to hide comments when linking to an individual entry. Progressive enhancement :)

   The pedantry of the comments on this blog never ceases to amuse me…

   12 Oct 2009, 18:23

6. Iain Wallace

   Pedant mathematicians? Surely not!

   12 Oct 2009, 20:02

7. Alison Kakoura

   40 talents

   13 Oct 2009, 14:14

8. Eleanor Lovell

   Thanks for all the comments… even the pedants ; ) As a few of you calculated, the statue contained 40 talents of gold.

   The four fractions add up to give
   

   so what’s left is

   Since this requires 9 talents, the total must have been 40 talents.

   13 Oct 2009, 14:35