30 May
2010
30 May
'10
1:14 p.m.
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.
The Roman merchants and engineers had a fairly standard abacus thing,
so math for them was not as bad as one might think.
--
Will