Feedback:  Thank you again for kind words.  Many people say they would like an outline - I'm sure it would benefit you more to make your own than for me to make one for you.  Remember details for  the annotated bibliography assignment are posted here.  Any reasonable form of shortened names will be acceptable for exams.  Answers that are not wrong  or incomplete are indeed likely to earn full or almost full credit.  

Someone says "I feel the questions I submit are trivial compared to what we discuss in class."  They may be.  Perhaps consider thinking more deeply about the questions.  See if you can find the answer to your first questions, and ask second questions.  Some ideas.  

§5.1 Quick Answers

Algorism is an unusual word, that is subtly different from algorithm, although they clearly have common roots.  An algorism is a presentation of the entire arithmetic system with place value.  Many algorithms are part of an algorism.  

Still no variables as we know them.  In fact, probably 300 years off.  We'll make a big deal when they come.  

The Marriage of Philology and Mercury isn't used to indicate how much people knew of geometry at the time, but to reflect the attitude.  The number theory result presented there is:  if p|a^n, then p|a, which is a key step toward proving unique factorisation into primes.  

Square root of two was known to be irrational long before this (the pythagoreans famously knew it).  Adelard may be the oldest extant proof.  [side length of square is square root of 2 times side, so the ratio of the two produces square root of two.]  He produced three versions for different audiences - more or less complete.  

Leonardo of Pisa was, indeed, Fibonacci.  I don't know why this isn't explicitly mentioned.  It seems Suzuki can't omit this by accident.  Hm.   Decimals are definitely not commonly used at this time, and won't be for a long time.  This is definitely *not* the first example of word problems.  They go as far back as any of our history - to the ancient egyptian papyri and probably babylonian tablets as well.    

Don't know much about Children's Crusade - probably children chosen so as to be non-threatening.  Probably could be easily researched - perhaps not reliable.  

Deductive geometry is based upon reasoning, rather than measuring.

Yes, it seems we get 12 inches/foot from here.  And perhaps where we get 16 oz/lb (and I don't know where we get "lb" for pound).  

Looks as if the Capella Palatina still is.  

We will go further back on Europe in 5.2, to put things together.  I encourage you to connect the end of chapter 2 with 5.2 to piece together European history.  

Michael Scot and Scotus are the same.  Merely different names.  

The church is *definitely* at least as powerful as any other state at this time, and this continues for many centuries.  

7 liberal arts = quadrivium (mathematics = arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) + trivium (rhetoric, dialectic [logic], grammar)

Vespers are evening prayers in the traditional catholic liturgy schedule.  We will hear music from them tomorrow.  

Tancred of Hauteville (980-1041) was a Norman lord known because of his sons.  

Footnote on Spain from our expert:  From the late 1300s through the end of the 1400s the Inquisition was the
most dominant force in Spain and killed/tortured/banished anyone who was
not a devout Christian. I'm sure math was looked at as a Muslim school
of thought, and thus thinking about or publishing math I'm sure was
grounds for execution. The Muslims and Jews that did remain in Spain just
claimed they had converted to Christianity but most left and settled in
other places, and so I'm sure they took their ideas with them and if
they flourished it was elsewhere. This was the tone in Spain until only
the end of Franco's regime in the mid 1970s. If any math was to come out
of Christian Spain at all I'm sure it would have only been extremely
recent history, but even then Spain has been rebuilding since Franco, and
its overwhelmingly Christian population has dissipated and there are
greater numbers of Jews/Muslims/ other religions there as well. So I would
think even recent mathematical contributions from Spain couldn't be
considered from "Christian Spain".