In the study of

ancient Egyptian mathematics Ancient Egyptian mathematics is the mathematics that was developed and used in Ancient Egypt 3000 to c. , from the Old Kingdom of Egypt until roughly the beginning of Hellenistic Egypt. The ancient Egyptians utilized Egyptian numerals, a numeral ...

, red auxiliary numbers are numbers written in red ink in the

Rhind Mathematical Papyrus The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP; also designated as papyrus British Museum 10057 and pBM 10058) is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics. It is named after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased ...

, apparently used as aids for arithmetic computations involving

fractions A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...

.It is considered to be the first examples of method that uses

Least common multiple In arithmetic and number theory, the least common multiple, lowest common multiple, or smallest common multiple of two integers ''a'' and ''b'', usually denoted by lcm(''a'', ''b''), is the smallest positive integer that is divisible by bot ...

References

* * * Egyptian mathematics Egyptian fractions Mathematics manuscripts {{math-stub