Questions tagged [numbers]
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When was the first time the number 0 came to mean a multiple of ten? [closed]
The earliest number notation I can find is the sexagesimal digit notation of cuneiform. From my understanding of that, in order to make numbers bigger than 60, you would just add the smaller numbers ...
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Terminology associated with mathematical induction
In "Number: The Language of Science" (1930), Tobias Dantzig refers to what we call the base case of mathematical induction as "the induction step" (and refers to what we call the ...
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Did the ancient Greeks know that "most" cube roots are irrational?
It is common knowledge that the Pythagoreans discovered irrational numbers (or incommensurability), for example if the hypotenuse of an isosceless right triangle is compared with one of the legs or ...
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Gate 44 at the Colosseum in Rome: XLIIII or XLIV? When and why the change?
We teach our children in school that 4 is written in Roman numerals as IV and not as IIII but at the Colosseum in Rome, gate 44 is identified as XLIIII and not as XLIV.
When did the change from IIII ...
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Why have advocates for positional number systems based on divisibility favoured base 12?
In the early twentieth century, with Esperanto and the like going on, a small movement called "dozenalism" began, with the aim of replacing base 10 with the purportedly more natural base 12. ...
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Origin of Catalan numbers and original intuition of the first interpretation and proofs
I was reading about Catalan numbers and how they provide the number count in a variety of situations.
I found it very interesting how the main proof is about the underlying common patterns and ...
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Are there examples of mathematical systems that reflect the worldview of the culture they are from?
By this I mean, are there systems of numbers, counting, sorting.. or even higher level mathematical concepts that reflect a culture's worldview? Did some cultures not develop certain math concepts ...
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What was the difference between Number and Magnitude in Ancient Greece [duplicate]
I've been reading Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz and in it, he writes about how the greeks differentiated between numbers as being discrete and magnitudes as being continuous. However, all of ...
user14943
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Historical origin of commas and periods in numbers
I have heard that in Canada and the United States of America, when we write a decimal number, then we use a period, like 1.111. When we write large numbers, then we use a comma, like 1,111. Sometimes ...
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Why do South Asians often use "lakhs" and "crores" instead of "millions"? What is the historical origin of this system?
I noticed that South Asians often write 10,00,000 instead of 1,000,000. My questions are:
What is the origin of this special numbering system? Was there a more practical reason for having a special ...
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Was there ever a word for 24 like "dozen" for 12? [closed]
The English language has more than one word for 12 (twelve, dozen) and 12^2 (one hundred and forty-four, gross), but has there ever been a word for 2*12 other than twenty-four?
I would also be ...
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Has any culture in history ever not invented digits, and just used letters?
We have characters for letters and numbers. We typically view them as a discrete sets. Has any culture ever mangled the two? To some degree it seems almost logical if your letters are already ...
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When did the word "Real number" begin to be used as an official terminology to refer to both rational and irrational numbers?
I am really curious about and struggling with finding when the word "Real number" began to be used as an official terminology to refer to both rational and irrational numbers.
In Wiki, it ...
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Why did the romans use IV and why doesn't it overcomplicate things?
Ok so if the Romans did not use things like IX and IV and XC etcetera then addition and subtraction would be almost as instant as it is in our number system.
However with the new system it seems to me ...
user14780
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Did anyone ever propose a hypercomplex numbers system with more than one anisotropic axis?
The real number axis is asymmetric against zero: for instance, multiplication of two negative or two positive numbers will produce a positive number, a square root of a negative number is not real, ...
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Who is the Dottie number named after?
I have learned about the Dottie number, though I am unsure to whom it is attributed to and why it is named as so.
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Who invented the first pronunciation system for binary numbers that is roughly analogous to how we pronounce everyday decimal numbers?
Who invented the first pronunciation system for binary numbers that is roughly analogous to how we pronounce everyday decimal numbers (by which I mean how 220 is pronounced 'two hundred twenty')?
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Why are quaternions more popular than tessarines despite being non-commutative?
Is this simply because of marketing, hype, etc?
The bicomplex numbers (especially tessarines) look just great being commutative and all.
Images source:https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?...
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What is the origin of Arabic numerals
I was taught that the numerals {0,1,2,...,9} are from the Arabic alphabet. But they look completely different from today's Arabic letters. I wonder what is the origin of Arabic numerals?
Edit: The web ...
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Was the concept of zero ever developed without relation to positional number systems?
Are there any ancient civilizations which had concept of zero but didn't not use positional numerals for any somewhat non-negligible (from historical point of view) amount of time?
If there are such ...
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