Another post from betting market company Polymarket read: “BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani to require all New York elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals.” The post has almost 14 million views.
Another post from betting market company Polymarket read: “BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani to require all New York elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals.” The post has almost 14 million views.
I sure fucking hope so. They’re way more common than the Roman ones.
And have you ever tried multiplication and division with Roman numerals? We tried it in math once. There is actually an algorithm for multiplication, but it is a pain in the ass. And division? You’ve got to subtract and count…
The numbers are still the same, just how they are written is different… 🤨
Yes, but working with digits instead of sums make math way easier. Try a simple multiplication with Roman numerals without converting them into into decimals first. What would XIII times XVII be?
CCXXI.
And how did you get this result? The Romans (and Europeans before the Arabic numerals) used a kind of digit replacement system with a bunch of additions. We did this in math, and compared to the 10x10+3x10+7x10+3x7=221 it was rather complicated.
I just multiplied 13 and 17… 🤦♂️
IDK how that shit is taught now, but I just add 13 together 17 times.
The ancient Egyptians converted to binary (well, decomposed the number to a sum of powers of 2, which is more or less the same thing) and did multiplication and division on the pieces, then stuck it all back together again.
And if you want read madness, check out how the ancient Greeks almost did calculus.