Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
i can't give you a lotof details sincei am not a mathematician but here in korea, i have tried to do some of the students excercises to see whati rememebr and when i can't they tell me, 'it is korean math'. so there is a possibility that different cultures have different methods.Not sure what this means
i already have an answer for that i don'tneed to read the popul vuh to find one, except to get some details.so how do you explain the fact that the maya started out in asia
it is an interesting read and brought to mind some questions about the minoans. it was once said that if their society was able to continue unchecked , we would be in the star trek age by now. my readings have trned up very little on their use of math, what do we know and did they have '0' also?Thank you minimalist for that link
stan wrote:When did the Arabs "invent" 0, and when did the Europeans get
Arabic numbers? Was it during the late days of theRoman empire?
I still don't understand why the Romans couldn't improve on their own numbering system, with all their philosophers and geometers and knowledge of the Greeks
Neither here nor there, but one day in my class I asked a bright Chinese
student in my English class to do some math for us on the board, using Chinese characters.
It was a relatively simple problem...maybe long division or multiplication by several-digit numbers.
He was able to do it, working furiously for several minutes, and covering most of the board. Very inefficient. Probably the abacus is quicker.
Not sure what this means...maybe different cultures had different goals or uses for their "maths," as the British say. Did any Romans go on record describing the weaknesses of
mcd xxxviii...etc.?
Adoption by the Arabs
These nine numerals were adopted by the Arabs in the 8th century. How the numbers came to the Arabs is recorded in al-Qifti's "Chronology of the scholars", which was written around the end the 12th century, quoting earlier sources [2]:
... a person from India presented himself before the Caliph al-Mansur in the year 776 who was well versed in the siddhanta method of calculation related to the movement of the heavenly bodies, and having ways of calculating equations based on the half-chord [essentially the sine] calculated in half-degrees ... Al-Mansur ordered this book to be translated into Arabic, and a work to be written, based on the translation, to give the Arabs a solid base for calculating the movements of the planets ...
The numeral system came to be known to both the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, whose book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals written about 825, and the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who wrote four volumes, On the Use of the Indian Numerals (Ketab fi Isti'mal al-'Adad al-Hindi) about 830, are principally responsible for the diffusion of the Indian system of numeration in the Middle-East and the West [4].
The use of zero in positional systems dates to about this time, representing the final step to the system of numerals we are familiar with today. The first dated and undisputed inscription showing the use of zero at is at Gwalior, dating to 876 CE. There were, however, Indian precursors from about 500 CE, positional notations without a zero, or with the word kha indicating the absence of a digit. It is, therefore, uncertain whether the crucial inclusion of zero as the tenth symbol of the system should be attributed to the Indians, or if it is due to Al-Khwarizmi or Al-Kindi.
In the 10th century, Middle-Eastern mathematicians extended the decimal numeral system to include fractions, as recorded in a treatise by Syrian mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi in 952-953.
In the Arab World—until modern times—the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was used only by mathematicians. Muslim scientists used the Babylonian numeral system, and merchants used the Abjad numerals, a system similar to the Greek numeral system and the Hebrew numeral system. Therefore, it was not until Fibonacci that the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was used by a large population.
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Thanks, Min. It surprises me that the Indian system had 9 digits, used for astronomical calucation.I always heard that our system was based on our 10 fingers! (I also had always heard that the arabs invented zero.)The use of zero in positional systems dates to about this time, representing the final step to the system of numerals we are familiar with today. The first dated and undisputed inscription showing the use of zero at is at Gwalior, dating to 876 CE. There were, however, Indian precursors from about 500 CE, positional notations without a zero, or with the word kha indicating the absence of a digit. It is, therefore, uncertain whether the crucial inclusion of zero as the tenth symbol of the system should be attributed to the Indians, or if it is due to Al-Khwarizmi or Al-Kindi.
THE MAYAN NUMBERS The Mayan' s number system is in some respects very similar to ours. They used only 3 symbols as opposed to our 10 and at the time hundreds of symbols used in Roman Numerals. These symbols are shown below.
The bar symbol represents 5, and the dots are 1's. The numbers can be written with the dots on top of horizontal lines . They may also be combined with shells for zero. The top left represents the number 6. Under this is 8. Under this is 14. Then the bottom left is 7. The top middle is 16.
71 HISTP: Thursday, August 3 9:00 PM
Documentary, History
Mayan Doomsday Prophecy
Archaeologists, astrologers and historians speculate on the meaning of the 2012 doomsday prophecy.
Original Air Date: Aug 03, 2006
