So Pythagoras and all these ancient people doing math how did they write it. Roman numerals seem way to clunky to use in math. How where formulas written? What did math look like before Arbic numbers?
They used counting boards and abacuses. The reason nobody needed such numerals is because calculations were not done on paper, which was expensive. Calculations were done on a counting board or abacus, and the numerals used reflected the state of the counting board better than modern numerals.Example:9 = IX = 10 - 19 was written as 10 - 1 because the counting board had a substraction column, so you would put a single pebble or token in the subtraction column in order to say 9. IX is objectively better at recording the state of the counting board.
>>16883275interesting that sounds complicated but makes sense. The thought just occurred to me that all these ancient people where doing math without modern numbers and forumuas we are familiar with today and I was like how the fuck did they do that. I would like to see a reenactment of how you say they did it. One other thing if a time traveler introduced just basic numbers and a few ways we do math how revolutionary would that be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamis_Tablet
>>16883293>I would like to see a reenactment of how you say they did it.https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL545ABCC6BA8D6F44https://ethw.org/Ancient_Computers>The Roman expression for 'to calculate' is 'calculos ponere' - literally, 'to place pebbles'. When a Roman wished to settle accounts with someone, he would use the expression 'vocare aliquem ad calculos' - 'to call them to the pebbles.' (Jen) (See also Menninger, p.316)
>>16883311>https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL545ABCC6BA8D6F44thanks very interesting
>>16883275>you would put a single pebble or token in the subtraction column in order to say 9.I'll elaborate a little more. So 9 was recorded as 10 - 1 with one pebble on the +10s line and one pebble on the -1s line. Obviously you could use a counting board differently, with 1 pebble on the 5s line and 4 pebbles on the 1s. However, this is not the normal form of 9.The general rule is to express numbers with as few pebbles as possible. This means there would never be 4 pebbles on a line. In fact, these were probably used so a line never had more than 2 pebbles, so the board was never cluttered and everything was easy to count by eye.The hand abacus loses this brevity over the counting board.
