Thursday 15 May 2008

. . . R O M A N____N U M E R A L S . . .

This is Blog Post No VIII in Roman , which is also Blog Post No 8 in Arabic

Just in case you were wondering how the Roman bankers kept track of loans, they used a 'tally stick' with notches down the edge. For normal Roman folk, before Arabic numerals came along, they used capital letters to represent different numbers. It was OK for showing most numbers, but you came unstuck on multiplication or division. Addition and subtraction could be tricky, too.

Find some simple Roman sequences at http://maryt.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/roman_numerals_complete.jpg

Believe it or not, this was the absolute most interesting topic culled from today's events . . . I occasionally use Roman numerals, as I had to learn them, along with Latin, at school . . .

1 comment:

Don said...

Hey! Franc you are really getting into this blog thing. I have not spent too much time on your site as I am finaly getting my site up to date. As least as to my latest pictures. Only Chelsea photos left to do today then I can have a rest. Therefore I will not make a comment about the site until I have spent more time on it. So far so good.