Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2016 April 8

= April 8 =

Goat problem
Several centuries ... I have been searching (and got stuck) in the 19th century:
 * Here (beautiful poem!)
 * ... and here (3 horses).
 * (a) Is someone able to find older descriptions of this problem?
 * (b) Is the term "goat problem" the official/ultimate/best description - or are there better ones? THX 213.169.163.106 (talk) 11:45, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think either of those is the goat problem as described in Wikipedia. The first one just asks for the radius of a circle whose area is 1 acre (the answer is $$\sqrt{1\mbox{ acre}/\pi}$$). The second is a different puzzle involving regions bounded by circular arcs. -- BenRG (talk) 22:40, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Then apart from the faulty examples: (a) (... centuries...) and (b) ? THX 213.169.163.106 (talk) 05:45, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The AMM article listed as a reference also seems to have little to do with the problem stated in the WP article. It does give a problem dating from the 18th century, but that involves finding the area bounded by a circle and its involute. So there seems to some confusion all around as to which problem is "the goat problem". Mathworld lists both the our version and the involute in its article, but it's hard to tell from from it what is historical, what's modern and what's Weisstein's original research. --RDBury (talk) 13:08, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This was my impression too. Any other opinions? 213.169.163.106 (talk) 20:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)