The story of numbers

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
That's an interesting take on it.

I watched some of the James Burke series on inventions that changed history. The one on bringing Arabic numerals into Europe was cute:

"How do you write a zero?"

"Just make a hole on the page."
 

KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
That's an interesting take on it.

I watched some of the James Burke series on inventions that changed history. The one on bringing Arabic numerals into Europe was cute:

"How do you write a zero?"

"Just make a hole on the page."
You should never teach math to kids. Here's why.

When my youngest daughter was around 5, she had a plate of cookies. I asked her for a cookie. She gave me a cookie. I told her, "You know I hate odd numbers. I need TWO cookies."

She took my cookie back and said, "Zero is an even number, too!"

Lesson learned. :)

eric
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
That's pretty good actually; whether factually true or not (the number 9 seemed a little fudged at the bottom loop, as did 7). That said, there is probably some seed of truth in it.

This thread reminded me of a series of programmes the BBC did on Radio 4 a couple of years back about numbers, looking at some of the most important numbers and their significance in mathematics, science, and nature; including 0, 1, π, e, the golden ratio (~ 1.618), and ∞. If you're in the UK it might be worth a look up (people outside the UK may be able to get the series on the BBC World site).

Dave
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
You should never teach math to kids. Here's why.

When my youngest daughter was around 5, she had a plate of cookies. I asked her for a cookie. She gave me a cookie. I told her, "You know I hate odd numbers. I need TWO cookies."

She took my cookie back and said, "Zero is an even number, too!"

Lesson learned. :)

eric
Smart girl! :D

Dave
 

studiot

Joined Nov 9, 2007
4,998
One difficulty I found with Arabic numerals, when working in the middle east, was that the Arabic zero is a decimal point, and our 5 is written 0

So I kept thinking something priced at 0. riyals was cheap - it would have been except this translates as 50 riyals in western numbers
 

Mark44

Joined Nov 26, 2007
628
The author of pdf describes "Roman algorithms" and "Arabic algorithms" where I'm pretty sure he/she means Roman/Arabic numerals. An algorithm is a procedure for doing something (and itself is an Arabic word).

I don't think I buy the business about the numbers coming from the angles in them.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
This thread reminded me of a series of programmes the BBC did on Radio 4 a couple of years back about numbers, looking at some of the most important numbers and their significance in mathematics, science, and nature; including 0, 1, π, e, the golden ratio (~ 1.618), and ∞. If you're in the UK it might be worth a look up (people outside the UK may be able to get the series on the BBC World site).

Dave
BBC: 5 NUMBERS The First Series, mentioned above.
BBC: ANOTHER 5 NUMBERS Second Series

--ETA: Largest Prime Number now known is Mersenne prime, \(2^{43,112,609}-1\), a 12,978,189 digit number
The Second Series (From 2003) states it as
\(2^{13,466,917} -1\), 4,053,900 digits long. There were 39 known Mersenne Primes in Oct, 2003, there are now at least 46 known, all since 1996 discovered by GIMPS

<SideTrack>
GIMPS at 47 TeraFlops the 5th largest distributed computing supercomputer, similar to folding@home- the fastest "computer" in the world at 8.1 PetaFlops, and SETI@Home 528 TeraFlops. By comparison, the fastest "standalone" Supercomputer as of 11/2008, IBM's Roadrunner is 1.1 Petaflops.
</SideTrack>
 
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Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Ah yes, that was the series. I recall the first series first time around on Radio 4; I don't think I've had a listen to all of series 2. I also got it wrong slightly, 1 isn't in the first series, but i (or j to us EEs) is. Nice to see it is still accessible so I can listen again. I assume you can listen outside of the UK?

--ETA: Largest Prime Number now known is Mersenne prime, \(2^{43,112,609}-1\), a 12,978,189 digit number
The Second Series (From 2003) states it as
\(2^{13,466,917} -1\), 4,053,900 digits long. There were 39 known Mersenne Primes in Oct, 2003, there are now at least 46 known, all since 1996 discovered by GIMPS
And where will it be in another 6 years I wonder?

<SideTrack>
GIMPS at 47 TeraFlops the 5th largest distributed computing supercomputer, similar to folding@home- the fastest "computer" in the world at 8.1 PetaFlops, and SETI@Home 528 TeraFlops. By comparison, the fastest "standalone" Supercomputer as of 11/2008, IBM's Roadrunner is 1.1 Petaflops.
</SideTrack>
That's not bad for a standalone. The biggest problem is an OS that can manage efficiently such power and resources.

Dave
 
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