Roman numerals... by Ian Binnie

Roman numerals [Q]

By: Ian Binnie Sydney
Date: Jan 25,2013 at 16:11
In Response to: Roman numerals (andreas)

> > Roman numerals
> > ... were a failure even when they were invented - can you imagine
> doing any arithmetic (or sorting) with that notation?
> people in the Roman empire did, for some 500 years ... we still admire
> what they achieved in administration, trade, architecture, military etc
> with that system
>
> I especially like their "tablet devices" ( href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus>Abacus)
>
> and btw, doing arithmetics in hex (as we all did not so long ago) looks
> as akward as roman numerals to me ;-)

Arithmetic in any positional system is logically the same, although binary is arguably simpler because there are fewer rules to learn. I often tell people that mankind made a mistake with decimal - god gave us 8 fingers, but being perverse man counted his thumbs as well.

The study of number systems is quite interesting - in fact addition and subtraction in roman numerals is not difficult - multiplication is more of a problem and division is almost impossible - but these concepts only arose later.

Even when arabic numerals were adopted the concept of zero was a problem until well into the Renaissance - it still seems to be a problem for much of our current population.

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