Editing Alcuin (section)

=== Mathematician ===
{{Main|Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes}}

The collection of mathematical and logical word problems entitled ''Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes'' ("Problems to Sharpen Youths"){{sfn|Alcuin|n.d.}} is sometimes attributed to Alcuin.<ref name="Peterson-2005">{{Cite web |url=http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_11_21_05.html |title=Ivars Peterson's MathTrek 21 November 2005}}</ref>{{sfn|Atkinson|2005|pp=354-362}} In a 799 letter to Charlemagne, the scholar claimed to have sent "certain figures of arithmetic for the joy of cleverness",<ref>''Epistola'' 172, MGH ''Epistolae'' 4.2: 285: "aliquas figuras arithmeticae subtilitatis laetitiae causa"</ref> which some scholars have identified with the ''Propositiones''.{{sfn|Jullien|1994|p=482-483}}{{efn|A more skeptical attitude toward Alcuin's authorship of this text and others is taken by {{harvnb|Gorman|2002|pp=101-130}} }}

The text contains about 53 mathematical word problems (with solutions), in no particular pedagogical order. Among the most famous of these problems are: four that involve [[river crossing problem|river crossings]], including the [[Jealous husbands problem|problem of three anxious brothers]], each of whom has an unmarried sister whom he cannot leave alone with either of the other men lest she be defiled<ref name="3-brothers">{{Cite web |url=http://logica.ugent.be/albrecht/alcuin.pdf |title=Latin title and English text of the problem}}</ref> (Problem 17); the [[Fox, goose and bag of beans puzzle|problem of the wolf, goat, and cabbage]] (Problem 18); and the problem of "the two adults and two children where the children weigh half as much as the adults" (Problem 19). [[Alcuin's sequence]] is the solution to one of the problems of that book.