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India's contributions to mathematics:
It should come as no surprise that the first recorded use of the number zero, recently discovered to be made as early as the 3rd or 4th century, happened in India. Mathematics on the Indian subcontinent has a rich history going back over 3,000 years and thrived for centuries before similar advances were made in Europe, with its influence meanwhile spreading to China and the Middle East.
As well as giving us the concept of zero, Indian mathematicians made seminal contributions to the study of trigonometry, algebra, arithmetic and negative numbers among other areas. Perhaps most significantly, the decimal system that we still employ worldwide today was first seen in India.
With such a significant technical lead, how did they fall behind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @11:27PM (2 children)
Didn't the Babylonians count in base 12 ? one for each knuckle head or was I misinformed?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @11:49PM
This [wikipedia.org] leads me to believe it was base 60. The composition of the written numerals appears to be an extension of a base 10 writing system, but the article clarifies that the arithmetic system itself was base 60.
60 and 12 are very good bases. As much as it pains me to say so, better than base 16. It's the only reason I still use feet and inches. 10 is a pretty lousy base all in all, only marginally better than a prime number imho. If I were the dictator of the world, I would re-formulate metric as base 12.
People would freak out, but moving the decimal point around works just as well whether or not the system includes A and B as numerals (though probably would need to formulate two new characters just for clarity in mass adoption).
Counting with each digit on the hand has the advantage of being able to extend successive (anatomical) digits while tallying. Perhaps turning the palm up could be our missing two (arithmetic) digits. Index, middle, ring, pinkie, thumb, palm, then other hand index, middle, ring, pinkie, thumb, palm. (Some people start tallying with the thumb but hey.) I've heard the story about using knuckle heads, but I'm not certain how that would enable easy communication of a simple quantity with one's hands. Though my proposal might leave ambiguity between 5 and 6 depending on how the palm is turned when communicating quantities non-verbally.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Friday September 22 2017, @11:53PM
Babylonians used base 60, at least in part because it was easily divisible in so many ways: 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20...
It still survives today in our measurement of time, angles, and geographic coordinates.