Re:Math and Analogies
by jacobolus on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @08:19PM
(#18557335)
Well MCM is not how Romans would write this except in rare cases. That one did not become a standard form until Medieval Europe.
MDCCCC is absolutely a more direct representation of the counters on a counting board than 1900. Each letter precisely represents one counter and its position.
But if you want, you can make a counting board with a line down the middle and use one side for negative values, in which case MCM would be a pretty direct representation of that. (It is unclear whether this was the origin of such numerals; we don’t have a whole lot of evidence about how calculation on ancient counting boards was done, because it was largely part of oral culture.)
MDCCCC is absolutely a more direct representation of the counters on a counting board than 1900. Each letter precisely represents one counter and its position.
But if you want, you can make a counting board with a line down the middle and use one side for negative values, in which case MCM would be a pretty direct representation of that. (It is unclear whether this was the origin of such numerals; we don’t have a whole lot of evidence about how calculation on ancient counting boards was done, because it was largely part of oral culture.)