Les Chiffres Romains (Roman Numerals.. because everything is simply better in French)

Just a short side blog stemming from today’s class discussion, I wanted to look a little more into Roman numerals. Just so that we all know a little about Roman numerals, I’ll give the basics. If anything is unclear, just look to the chart below.

1. Something fairly obvious (and one of the easiest ways we mark down a number, such as with slashes) are little Is. Therefore I means 1, II means 2, III means 3, but four marks may seem like a little too many..

2. Romans moved on to the mark V, which represents 5. Placing I in front of the V, or a smaller number in front of a larger number, indicates subtraction. Thus, IV means 4. After V comes addition… VI means 6, VII means 7, VIII means 8.

3. X means 10. But with 9 we have the same rules as before. IX means I (one) subtracted from X (ten), leaving 9. Numbers into the teens, twenties and thirties follow the same rules, except with X's indicating the number of tens. So would mean XXXI is 31.

4. L means 50 and based on the principles of Roman numerals, one can probably guess what 40 is. If you guessed XL, you're right = X (ten) subtracted from L (fifty). Therefore 60 is LX , 70 is LXX, and 80 is LXXX.

5. C stands for the word centum, which is Latin for 100. We still use this root in English words such as "century", “centipede”, and "cent". The subtraction rule applies to this too, 90 is written as XC and like the X's and L's, the C's are tacked on to the beginning of numbers.

6. D stands for 500 and M is 1,000. You see a lot of Ms in Roman numerals because they were used to indicate dates.

7. Larger numbers were indicated by putting a horizontal line over them, which meant to multiply the number by 1,000. This usage is no longer used because the largest numbers expressed are usually dates.

Something funny about the Roman numerals, as opposed to Arabic numerals (the one’s we use today), is that they didn’t have a zero, and I wonder if they even had negative numbers. I feel like this would hinder their progression in the math department.

I noticed something else that was odd about this writing system. Just by looking at a number, you can’t tell at first glace if it is a large number. For example, MD stands for 1,500, but LXXXIV means 84. So even if there are more figures, doesn’t mean it’s a larger number, as in the Arabic numeral system.

All I can think about as I type this is the long division. The long division, people! Imagine the horror! But all kidding aside, I can only imagine how much this writing system hindered their progression in mathematics. Just a thought..