LOGISTICS

, or LOGISTICAL Arithmetic, a name sometimes employed for the arithmetic of sexagesimal fractions, used.in astronomical computations.

This name was perhaps taken from a Greek treatise of Barlæmus, a Monk, who wrote a book of Sexagesimal Multiplication, which he called Logistic. Vossius places this author about the year 1350, but he mistakes the work for a Treatise on Algebra.

The same term however has been used for the rules| of computations in Algebra, and in other species of Arithmetic: witness the Logistics of Vieta and other writers.

Shakerly, in his Tabulæ Britannicæ, has a Table of Logarithms adapted to sexagesimal fractions, and which he calls Logistical Logarithms; and the expeditious arithmetic, obtained by means of them, he calls Logistical Arithmetic.

Logistical Curve, Line, or Spiral, the same as the Logarithmic, which see.