Talk Like a Pirate Day – Pirate Mathematics

Pirates used celestial navigation (quadrant, traverse board) and simple arithmetic for dividing treasure. The ‘pirate game’ is a game theory problem: n pirates, 100 gold coins, propose a division; if half or more (including proposer) vote yes, it passes; otherwise proposer dies. The subgame perfect equilibrium: the senior pirate keeps most coins. The mathematics involves backward induction and has surprising results (the oldest pirate gets 98 coins). Pirates also used probability to calculate the odds of a successful raid. Arrr – mathematics is the real treasure.