Re: [HM] Roman Numerals
Randy K. Schwartz (rschwart@schoolcraft.cc.mi.us)
Wed, 12 May 1999 15:49:26 -0400
I am not convinced. The fact is that John has had to type three
separate lines: one labeled "in the units place", one labeled "in the
tens place", etc. For the sake of completeness, this would need to
continue indefinitely (and one would quickly run out of alphabet
letters). More importantly, what this means is that one would need to
memorize not just one "times table" (as in Arabic notation, up to 9 by
9) but rather two, three, indefinitely many "times tables".
And that, it seems to me, is the whole point. The invention of
place-value ciphering was a leap beyond tallying (and Roman numerals are
an upgraded version of tallies, it seems to me) because it meant that
counting and computation could be reduced to a small set of basic facts.
Perhaps those who think that Roman numeral arithmetic is not so
difficult could (say) try to multiply CMLXXXIX by itself, and then
report back to us whether their opinion remains the same?
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Prof. Randy K. Schwartz
Department of Mathematics
Liberal Arts Building
Schoolcraft College
18600 Haggerty Road
Livonia, MI 48152-2696 USA
email rschwart@schoolcraft.cc.mi.us
voice 734/462-4400 extn. 5290
fax 734/462-4558
"In the Inn of the world there is room for
_everyone_. To turn your back on even one
person, for whatever reason, is to run
the risk of losing the central piece of
your jigsaw puzzle." - Leo F. Buscaglia
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