CaveLamb on Fri, 27 May 2011 18:57:35 -0500
typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:
CaveLamb on Fri, 27 May 2011 12:54:52 -0500
lot of letters.
Ok, but when you have no ZERO and no Decimal Point in your system?

THEN what?
CCCCLXXXXIIJ Fathoms plus three quarters of another.

I think it's more likely they used cubits...

"... the yard? Whatever happened to cubits?" Outraged Roman
customer on the change to decimal numbers in a sketch by The Frantics
(on the occasion of Canada's conversion to the Metric system.)
Or hands?

Turns out the Romans had a lot of measurements. The Stadia, the
pace, and I used the ancient Greek Fathom because I had no online
access to double check when I wrote that.

It's probably hard for us to imagine life without decimals - or zeros.

The Introduction of "Arabic Numbers" and Zero was a paradigm
shift of the first order. Still is, for a lot of kids. (And lets
not get into teachers who do not understand that 3 - 5 = -2 is a valid
calculation.)

The really hard thing to get people to understand is that a Roman
X is not 10 but "ten", that VII is not 7 but "Five and one and one".

But I'm sure it made perfect sense to them.
12 stadias, 22 paces, 7 hands, and a finger nail or two?

No algebra, no trigonometry, no fractions of any kind!

Remember "rational numbers" - those numbers whcih can be expressed
as a ratio of whole numbers? 3/4, 8/7, 99/34 or 22/7 (a good
approximation Pi). But the Pythagoreans had their "crisis of faith"
when they could not make the square root of 2 out to be a "rational"
number

Fractions you would have, in terms of half and quarters, and
"halves of quarters" or in ratios "as three is to five". Musical
notes have the hemi, demi and semi quavers, which get agglutinated to
signify shorter and shorter notes. (One sixty forth notes, anyone?)

But without symbol and place notation - "math is hard".

Basically an integer world.

It's a Rational Number world - "nothing is real...."

tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
We will drink no whiskey before its nine.
It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!