Numeration Systems

Since missing last week, it has been hard catching up today! But, at the same time it's been an interesting unit learning about base five, base ten, base twelve and so on. Also, 3.1 has more to offer than just the bases -- it shows a wide variety of different numerical systems.
Starting with Egyptian numerals, the text book (page 127) it gives numbers posted by Egyptian numerical system and ours. It is so fun to see what our numbers look like next to other historical number systems. This video is a good example and I found it helpful in understanding the Egyptian number system and how it cooresponds to the one we use in class, and in the United States. Some of the symbols are a bit humerous. I felt the man in the video was quite helpful in understanding what it is that they used to as base ten numbers with what we use.



Another interesting number system that is discussed in the book is the Babylonian numeration. The book (page 129) says that the Babylonian number system has a weakness. It says that the number system is missing a symbol for the number Zero. Here is a fun video to watch closely and see how the numbers aling, it's a confusing consept to unerstand -- my opnion at least!

Another number system mentioned in this chapter is the Mayan number system, it is really cool! Our book mentioned that thier number system was based on 20. One way to keep it line is to remember that they would says "one man for 20, two men for 40...". The book says that this system was used in New Guinea as well. Keep in mind that the Mayans from Yucatan and the Aztecs of Mexico used this number frequently.

Lastly, another great (and more common amoungst us Americans) is the Roman Numeral system. The Romans used based 10 in thier number system, like the Egyptians. We are used to see their most common symbols (for the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000). The symbols used here are:
I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000

It is interesting to note that the Romans used their number system so that one may read it decreasing order from left to right. One last video shows an easy way to follow the number system! :)