Natalie, 

      This is a good paper about Eleanor Robson's ideas about Plimpton
   322.  I think you have understand her main point very well -- namely
   that every piece of mathematics comes from a specific historical
   context and that understanding the mathematics requires understanding
   the context.  There is another aspect of what she is saying about
   Plimpton 322 that I don't think you really caught on to, though.
   Namely, her other main idea here is that "the man" who created the
   tablet was probably a teacher, and that the tablet probably records
   the numbers for a collection of problems along the same lines as the
   one we studied on the YBC 6967 tablet.  The contents of Plimpton
   322 would let you construct a whole series of such questions, but
   with different numbers.  That way, students could practice on different
   examples.  

      You're right that she argues convincingly that the background
   necessary for functions generating Pythagorean triples and 
   trigonometry tables are just not part of what we know about the
   repertoire of Old Babylonian mathematics.  The discussion of 
   how the Babylonians conceived of circles is especially good, and
   it shows that the idea that Plimpton 322 was a trigonometry table
   just does not "hold water" historically(!)
     
      Some relatively small, "picky" writing points: "Babylonian's" with the
   apostrophe followed by the s is a singular possessive.  You might 
   say "the Babylonian's stylus" to refer to a stylus used by a single 
   scribe.  The plural possessive is Babylonians' with the apostrophe
   after the s. For example, you might say "the Babylonians' 
   understanding of algebra" to refer to their collective understanding.
   Finally if you just want the plural noun, there is no apostrophe:
   "the Babylonians had a system of scribal schools."  Misusing these
   forms detracts from the impression your writing makes and you should
   try to avoid that. 

      Also, in your first paragraph, the "studied for countless centuries"
   is not true at all (and something of a cliche to boot).  While we
   apparently don't know exactly when Plimpton 322 was unearthed, that was surely 
   only a matter of a few years (or at most decades) before 1922 when 
   it passed into Plimpton's collection.  It was lying buried in the ground 
   and forgotten for the whole time between about 1800 BCE and 1900 CE.

      Finally, you say in the first paragraph that Neugebauer and Hoyrup
   "claim that Plimpton 322 and other tablets portray the Babylonian's [sic--
   see above!] comprehension of algebraic functions and even the Pythagorean
   theorem." But don't forget that Jens Hoyrup was the historian who 
   interpreted YBC 6967 as "cut and paste geometry."  Robson would not
   disagree with him about that.  In fact she would say that all the 
   rows from Plimpton 322 could be used to generate problems of the same
   type.  Putting Hoyrup together with Neugebauer here is not correct.

   Grade:  B+