The text was found in tomb M247 of the burial grounds near Zhangjiashan, Jiangling County, in Hubei province, excavated in December–January 1983–1984.
As well as the mathematical work the strips covered government statutes, law reports and therapeutic gymnastics.
On the back of the sixth strip, the top has a black square mark, followed by the three characters 筭數書,[4][5] which serve as the title of the rolled up book.
The problems cover elementary arithmetic; fractions; inverse proportion; factorization of numbers; geometric progressions, in particular interest rate calculations and handling of errors; conversion between different units; the false position method for finding roots and the extraction of approximate square roots; calculation of the volume of various 3-dimensional shapes; relative dimensions of a square and its inscribed circle; calculation of unknown side of rectangle, given area and one side.
The text has been translated to English by Christopher Cullen, director of the Needham Research Institute.