30 May
2010
30 May
'10
9:18 a.m.
On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 6:05 PM, Andrew Burton
<aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2010 2:55 AM
Subject: Re: Anyone off to VCF-UK
Oh, they're quite fun, and are still used for decorative counting purposes.
The primary snag with them is that they not only do not facilitate
arithmetic, they actually hinder it, as a non-positional system with
embedded calculations - e.g. MMIX for 2009, where you have to mentally
take one from the final ten to yield nine.
Positional notation works much better, and for it, you really need a
zero, which Roman numerals never fully adopted.
This is why most of the world quickly adopted Arabic numerals, which
themselves borrowed the Hindu invention of zero. Not only the West -
the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and other users of non-alphabetic
scripts have also adopted modern Western-style Arabic numerals.
Metric makes sense. Everything's in tens and hundreds and thousands;
unit conversion is trivial. The different measurements are all
connected - 1 litre = a 10 x 10 x 10 cm cube, and that much water is
1kg. Freeze it, that's 0?C; boil it, that's 100?. It all interlocks
like clockwork, no fooling around with 24 of this makes 1 of those but
three-fourteenths of one of them, and a unit of weight depends on what
you're weighing and suchlike nonsense.
It's about as sensible, practical and useful as Roman numerals.
Actually, I think Roman Numerals are pretty cool. Ok, I only understand the
particular format usually used for dates (e.g. MMVII = 2007), but I am aware
there are (atleast) two other formats for Roman Numerals (neither of which I
have learnt to understand yet - as I haven't tried to).
Oh really? Such as?
I'm aware of using lower-case letters but this doesn't really change anything.
Without Roman Numerals, would we ever have had
sexadecimal / hexadecimal??
I don't follow. Hex is a straighforward modification of Arabic
numerals for base16 instead of base10. (As is octal). There is no
influence in it from Roman numerals that I'm aware of.
--
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