Submission + - Medieval Islamic tiling reveals mathematical savvy
MattSparkes writes: "It turns out that Medieval Islamic designers used elaborate geometrical tiling patterns at least 500 years before Western mathematicians developed the concept. They are not quite perfect though, because the patterns show a few defects where a single tile was placed incorrectly. The defects are probably mistakes by workers putting together the design as there are only 11 defects out of 3700 tiles, and each can be corrected by a simple rotation. You just can't get the staff..."