Math Past 0, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Where did the numerals we use today come from? What’s the same and what’s different about the numeral systems we’ve studied? We have learned a lot about how people throughout the world, both in the past and today, write and talk about numbers! We learned about Chinese number rods.
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We learned about the Yoruba people and how they describe 15 as 5 before 20. We even learned about why the number 12 was important to ancient Egyptians, which is why we see it on our clocks! All of this leads us to wonder: Where did the numbers we use come from? It turns out to be a complicated story that’s missing a few pieces! The numerals we use today were created and developed by mathematicians and astronomers in India. They were later 1 2 3
A key person in the development of the Hindu-Arabic numerals in India was the mathematician Brahmagupta (c. 598–670). His book Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta (The Opening of the Universe) appears to be the original text that brought Indian mathematics and their numerals to the Islamic world.1 Another important person in the story is Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Mūsā al Khwārizmī, usually shortened to al Khwārizmī. His book On Indian Numbers, which was later translated into Latin, became one of the main sources Europeans used to learn the Indian numerals.2
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We also learned about Maya numerals, which use the shell symbol for 0.
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passed on to Europeans through translations of texts that were written during the Islamic Golden Age. Because of these two sources, they are called the Hindu-Arabic numerals.
In fact, according to some scholars, the word algorithm also comes from the work of al Khwārizmī, but only because of a mistake. Some of the translations of his work were not very good ones, and one even identified the author as Algor, a former king of India. Because On Indian Numbers taught people throughout Europe how to do arithmetic and algebra with Hindu-Arabic numerals, the word algorithm came to be named after Algor, since Europeans thought he had written the book!3 Guide students to compare the Hindu-Arabic numerals with some of the other systems they have studied. Show students the following table of the numerals 9, 10, and 11. Explain that the first row shows the Hindu-Arabic numerals, the second row shows the same numbers represented by Chinese number rods, and the bottom row shows the Maya numerals for 9, 10, and 11.
Jeff Suzuki, Mathematics in Historical Context, 78–79. Suzuki, Mathematics in Historical Context, 86. Suzuki, Mathematics in Historical Context, 86.
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