Babylonian Operations Not Working Out So Well

Question

I'm going to denote 1 as v and 10 as < to replace the Babylonian symbols

my homework says to evaluate $$(vv)+(<vvvv)+(<vv+vv)+(<<v)+(vv)$$ Because Babylonians used powers of 60 for their place values, I started off with $$(2\times60^4)+(14\times60^3)+(14\times60^2)+(21\times60^1)+(2\times60^0)$$ adding everything up, I get $28,995,122$. However, my homework says the answer is $16,514$. Can anybody please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

The task as given in your image is

vv <vvvv <vv + vv <<v vv

You have inserted additional parentheses and plus signs that make it into nonsense. What is meant must be

2,14,12 + 2,21,2

which we can add with the usual pencil-and-paper addition, in base 60:

   2  14  12
+  2  21   2
------------
   4  35  14

with not even any carries. Then all that remains is to convert 4,35,14 into decimal:

$$ 4\cdot 3600 + 35\cdot 60 + 14 = 16514 $$

Answer 2

first I count 22 in your second to rightmost term.

But reversing out the book answer, it evaluates to

$2\cdot 60^3 + 14\cdot60^2 + 13\cdot 60 + 22$

And the only other thing I can guess is that something was lost in translation.