Roman Numerals?

[SilverPhantom2]

Arabic numerals, the system we use in the west today (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) first seemed clumsy to the west who preferred Roman numerals. Around 950 A.D., Arabic numerals seemed a lot nicer to quantify things economically.

But what if Arabic numerals simply didn't hold in the west?

 

[The Sicilian]

Arabic numerals, the system we use in the west today (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) first seemed clumsy to the west who preferred Roman numerals. Around 950 A.D., Arabic numerals seemed a lot nicer to quantify things economically.

But what if Arabic numerals simply didn't hold in the west?

I thought it was Fibonacci who introduced Arabic numerals? Are you proposing that they never make it to Europe, or that the Europeans never adopt the numerals? If the later, you need to have them replaced by something more efficient. The truly clumsy system was the Roman one.

 

[john]

Math besides simple addition or subtraction isn't all that easy with roman numerals.

Also, someone in the west will have to come up with the concept of zero at some point

 

[sunsurf]

I agree.

Here's a possibility:

1 I
2 B
3 T
4 Q
5 V
6 W
7 S
8 H or W
9 N
0 O or an O with a slash through it

The letters used as digits get modified so as to distinguish them from the letters being used as letters. Most or all of the Arabic numerals we use are modified versions of the original Arabic numerals.

But using the Arabic numerals is a lot more likely.

 

[MrP]

I agree.

Here's a possibility:

1 I
2 B
3 T
4 Q
5 V
6 W
7 S
8 H or W
9 N
0 O or an O with a slash through it

The letters used as digits get modified so as to distinguish them from the letters being used as letters. Most or all of the Arabic numerals we use are modified versions of the original Arabic numerals.

But using the Arabic numerals is a lot more likely.

If you want to use letters as numbers, you might be interested by the Greek systems. I agree with the consensus that the Arabic forms are much more convenient, while noting that people often make the same claim of metric (as opposed to Imperial measurement) and in two centuries it has yet to completely replace Imperial, despite higher levels of cultural exchange than in the period in question. So I think retarding the spread of the Arabic system is quite a feasible suggestion.

 

[proximefactum]

Dark Age/Medieval/Renaissance Europeans used a "bead abacus" for computation, given the unwieldy nature of Roman numerals. This abacus was, in turn, derived from Roman models created to circumvent the same problem. The system was so complex that the operators possessed almost "supernatural" powers given the mysterious nature of the computations. The use of these kinds of abacuses persisted well after European contact with Arabic numerals -- even up to the time of the Reformation. (Christian) Europeans took a long time to come around to Arabic numerals, and their reluctance to shift towards modern mathematical computation styles likely handicapped math develop in the "west".[1]

I think that eventually a more transparent system like Arabic numerals would have been adopted, given the limitations of the Roman abacus for complex financial calculations. Maybe a Catholic edict forbidding use of Arabic numerals would have stalled development of a "new math", but the Reformation would have to be butterflied away given that newly Protestant nations might develop new mathematical advances forbidden in Catholic lands.

1. See Ifrah, Georges. "The Universal History of Numbers: From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer" (Wiley, 2000)