The Change from Roman Numerals - Numberphile

[@numberphile]

Objectivity Videos: kzbin.info Patrons can enjoy some extra pictures and scans from this video here: www.patreon.com/posts/115548802 Rob's book Much Ado About Numbers... Amazon: amzn.to/3zFinog

[@AbbeyRoad69147]

Please can you tell him to wear GLOVES when he touches the pages!!!!!!!! This is our history!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@babsibecause]

the „1“ with the long tail is actually still a thing outside the UK/US, in german speaking countries it‘s quite common. To avoid confusion, 7s are written with a horizontal line.

[@WaterShowsProd]

I was going to mention this. It's quite common to find in many places around the world.

[@thomicrisler9855]

I (an American) write my 1s with the "tail" (never would have thought to call it that) when it's on its own, but as just a vertical line when it's a part of a longer number.

[@rowejon]

When I moved from the UK to the Netherlands I started writing 7s with a crossbar. It just avoids confusion.

[@100percentSNAFU]

​@@thomicrisler9855Also American, and I do the same. I also always put a slash through my zeroes whenever I am using numbers and letters in the same space to avoid a zero looking like the letter "O"

[@85Pando]

Came here to say that as well... Using only I for 1 makes it confusable 1 and 7 have to be distinguishable as well. Same with O and 0 (thats why I strike My 0 as well). Anyone else do manual crypto?

[@jrneconman]

This conversion to the modern system came much later than I thought, very interesting!

[@shruggzdastr8-facedclown]

It kinda makes sense, though, given how far away England is from where this number system originated. It had to metriculate its way thru the rest of Europe (from Greece and Turkey all the way west to France) before reaching England. Each city, town and village along the way needed some amount of time to get accustomed to the new system before it went viral to the next population center. Given, also, that this was during a time long before the arrival of the internal-combustion engine and, first, telegraph/telephone cables and, later, fiber-optic cables, the average speed of information-sharing was somewhere between a human's walking pace and a horse's full gallop -- as had been the case for many millennia prior

[@EebstertheGreat]

@@shruggzdastr8-facedclown Arabic numerals did not spread town to town the way spoken vernacular spreads. They spread from one scholarly community to another by distribution of written manuscripts and occasionally books. The reason the spread was so slow was the limited knowledge of Latin in England and, more importantly, the inability to print much in volume. Uptake of Arabic numerals in England was rapid following the invention of the printing press. It's worth pointing out that it wasn't just England that rarely used Arabic numerals before the 15th century. That was true in all of Europe outside of Al-Andalus, even in Greece. Italian merchants did adopt Arabic numerals earlier due to the influence of Fibonacci, but the general literate public did not. It never had any significant spread outside of Italy until after the invention of the printing press, when it started to spread in incunabula. The thing is, even a century after these started to become mainstream in England, they had not displaced Roman numerals, as you see here. Both continued to be used by most literate people, and to some extent, they still are (though Arabic numerals had displaced Roman numerals for most purposes by the end of the 18th century).

[@marlonbryanmunoznunez3179]

Weren't those numbers introduced through Muslim Spain and Northern Italy? I remember reading that Toledan scholars were familiar with the number system through translations of Arab works and Fibonacci encountered the numbers during a travel to Algeria and introduced them to Northern Italy at his return. Then when the printing press became available the system expanded from those places where it was being used locally.

[@nathanielb3510]

@@shruggzdastr8-facedclown I'm pretty sure that learned people in big population centres, scholars, clergy, nobility, would adopt and use the system before it had to go to "each city, town, and village along the way". On the Wikipedia page for the Liber Abaci, it mentions a version of the book in 1227 dedicated to Michael Scot, of (unsurprisingly) Scotland. So I think the Hindu-Arabic numerals taking centuries to catch on in some circles has to do with cultural inertia, rather than England being a backwater.

[@mickvonbornemann3824]

Arab numerals have been found in France from the 13th Century

[@friiq0]

I love that he was practicing the multiplication with the new numerals. A huge multiplication like that would have been a nightmare to calculate in Roman numerals, so I suspect it must have been quite novel and amazing to people of that time to see how useful this new number system was!

[@robertewalt7789]

Even in those days, Western European merchants used abacuses to do calculations, which used decimal places.

[@WyvernYT]

It's like a paper abacus - fast and easy!

[@jaimeduncan6167]

I was about to write this, he was probably in awe with the power of the system. Thanks to that approach it was “easy” to build mechanical calculators, and later the study of binary numbers and the relationship with Boolean alt was clear.

[@Timebug22]

that X = X mistake is such a relatable mistake, looks perfectly fine until you read it back a day later...

[@rogercarl3969]

I have a feeling it is not so much a mistake but a deliberate convention. If it were a mistake is would be a one time thing but in his chart X=X and then it appears in the text. Also it keeps the number to be a single digit taking up less space, which is part of the efficiency to use Arabic numerals in the first place. I say this since I made a program once for cards and 10 is the only card that needed two spaces (annoying for what I was trying to accomplish) so turned it into an X. There are benefits to its usage.

[@mr.pavone9719]

It also shows that he's still using x for 10 so he doesn't throw anyone off. He's made so many changes to his accounting it's important to let people know what hasn't changed.

[@tomgidden]

Hey, it worked for Apple's iPhone numbering!

[@sammarks9146]

It’s the Laurie Anderson Theorem

[@werdwerdus]

1 Doge still equals 1 Doge iykyk

[@pcsledge]

At 10:48 the actual mistake is that the "8" in 24680 should be a "9", so 24690.

[@LarsHHoog]

He may have doubled then from right to left and forgot about a carry from 2×5

[@BobStein]

@@LarsHHoog Ah so the animation at 10:55 is misleading, but the audio may be correct. The missing carry is in the tens digit of 12345 x 2 = 24690 not 24680

[@BenjaminNagelBN]

​@BobStein the animation is also wrong, the issue is not the addition of the numbers, but the first multiplication itself. Like @pcsledge mentioned the 8 should be a 9.

[@BobStein]

@@BenjaminNagelBN ...because in multiplying 12345 by 2 there's a carry from the 1's place to the 10's place. That's why the 8 should be a 9.

[@renyhp]

the audio is also incorrect as it's going through the rightmost digits of 12345×3 instead of considering 12345×2

[@mytube001]

A point about the multiplication exercise... Since Roman numerals don't work like that, he was likely doing it to better learn how to, given the new methods the new number system allowed.

[@wes643]

I can imagine his delight to see multiplication done so easily. Multiplying Roman numerals must have been a nightmare.

[@rhill571]

@@wes643 The shift to using Arabic numerals kind of went hand-in-hand with the shift to doing math on paper rather than with casting-counters. So people using Roman numerals would do multiplication with counters, which is comparable to using an abacus. I sort of suspect that's why the receipts were still in Roman numerals. A lot of otherwise illiterate merchants could still do their accounts with counters, so maybe monetary values still tended to be in Roman numerals.

[@BritishBeachcomber]

I love Brady's videos. He asks the kind of questions that the viewer would ask.

[@Zenitect]

Seeing tidbits of normal everyday life from long ago is the most fascinating part of history for me. Great video!

[@numberphile]

Hope you watch my channel Objectivity!? kzbin.info

[@trwijbenga]

I never really realized there was an transition from roman numerals, but as soon as I saw the title of this video I was interested! Great stuff

[@SebBrosig]

the j at the end instead of the last i: foreshadowing electrical engineers.

[@ruudh.g.vantol4306]

Compare also the Dutch “ij”, as one of its origins is the long-i.

[@DruHarden]

Linguistically at this time J was just considered a special kind of I. So it makes more sense than it seems.

[@dlevi67]

@@DruHarden In Italian J is still called 'I lunga' - long I - to this day (and used very rarely/archaically where 'I' has a semi-consonantal value).

[@deinauge7894]

to me it is similar to arabic writing, where the last letter of a word often has a curvy tail added

[@pmmeurcatpics]

​@@deinauge7894also Greek sigma!

[@R.B.]

8:55 I think maybe the dotted I's for 211 are actually being used as carry indicators. The 11 shillings don't have them, but where there are carries, he does have them.

[@dermaniac5205]

The last column is missing the carry indicator, then. There would be one above the 2

[@R.B.]

@dermaniac5205 maybe he's inconsistent with it. The point being though that the 11 shillings the line below didn't have the dots. It might have been a notation he was experimenting with and it was working for the i's in 2ii? I guess we need to ask him what he was thinking?

[@dermaniac5205]

@@R.B. Yeah, I can see both possibilities. Maybe he was inconsistent about the carry notation, or he was inconsistent about dotting his 1s 🙂

[@corsaircaruso471]

I had a similar thought.

[@spacedoubt15]

3:33 I think what's interesting is the use of the more convenient modern script for years, which if written out in roman numerals can prove to be quite long, while sticking to roman script for everyday accounting numbers which are more important to get right in the short term.

[@otterlyso]

They are in Dulwich College, which was founded by Edward Alleyn, who acted leading roles in Shakespeare and Marlowe, and which is where PG Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler went to school.

[@PopeLando]

Suspicious boss: "So we took EXACTLY 400 pounds?" Box office: "Uhh... and sixpence! Four hundred pounds and sixpence."

[@DeadJDona]

in 2 days!

[@nanamacapagal8342]

Reminds me of how Mt. Everest is exactly 29000 ft, but if tour guides say that then hikers would assume they're rounding off. So they instead say Mt. Everest is 29003 ft

[@user-rm9zx7ln9i]

Said Nobby.

[@tulliusexmisc2191]

@@nanamacapagal8342 It's not just tour guides, it was the official measurment by the first accurate cartographers.

[@thekinginyellow1744]

@@nanamacapagal8342 Not sure where you are getting your data, but as of 2020, the officially accepted (by China, Nepal and Nat Geo,...) height for Everest is ~29032' for "snow height" and 29017' for "rock height".

[@bobrong9645]

Fun (?) fact: the "long tail" of the 1 looks perfectly normal to me, and probably to most French people too. And if you wonder how we differentiate our 1s from our 7s, the question's never occurred to me (not the same angle?), but 7 has an extra dash anyway.

[@mytube001]

I write a seven with a dash through it, but I would never write a one anything like a seven. That just looks ugly and confusing.

[@yagelbar]

Look at the computer digit 1. Even here in this line. It doesn't look like a l and not like a 7.

[@shaevor5680]

same for Germany

[@jonathanrichards593]

Yes, came here to say the same thing. All my mainland European friends and acquaintances will write a 1 with a tail, often more so than the example at 7:40. And I am in the habit of putting a dash through a 7, even though that's not how I was taught in the England of the 1950s.

[@MrDannyDetail]

I thought the figure he pointed at was actually a one with a 'cap' rather than a tail. Ones can still be written today with a cap, but if so they usually also have a horizontal base added to help differentiate them from twos. I also put a dash across my sevens.

[@davejblair]

Mind slighty blown by this. What astounds me is that anything ever got done in the 159i. Writing in roman numerals and indo-arabic, in imperial currency, adding unnecessary Js to the end and then jumbling it all up. Throw in a bit of black death, lack of electricity and patchy internet and I realise this was a hard time to be alive. Respe100t.

[@jaiku99]

That patchy internet must have been annoying 😊

[@Qwertified108]

I 100 what you did there

[@davejblair]

@Qwertified108 lol

[@matthewscott7198]

"ij" and"iij" are still used in books of Gregorian Chant to indicate that something is to be sung twice or thrice, i.e. the usual 3x3 (often with variation the third time) of the Kyrie.

[@arnauarnauarnau]

Feels like a mix of objectivity and numberphile. Love it

[@tozainamboku]

It was interesting the Henslowe aways used the new numerals to write the year of the performance, since one of the places were Roman numerals are often still used is to write the year for the copyright at the end of the credits of a film.

[@BojoPigeon]

One of the fun things I found browsing around the Digital Vatican Library on-line was that things that looked _exactly_ like Excel Spreadsheets went back even further than the use of Hindu-Arabic numbers in Europe. The only difference was that they had separate columns for I, X, C, M, etc, to make the math easier.

[@recurvestickerdragon]

yup! ledgers are so cool and I kinda want one

[@blindleader42]

Excel? Don't you mean VisiCalc?

[@MrFahrenheit200]

If we kept using Roman numerals this channel would be called letterphile

[@PerMortensen]

I'm quite surprised that the switch from Roman to Arabic numerals happened as late as the 1500s. I don't know when exactly I'd have thought it occurred, but certainly I'd have guessed centuries earlier.

[@noirdezzir8424]

This transition to Indian numerals is not really fully complete yet. They still use some Roman numerals for nostalgic or ornamental purposes.

[@Andernol]

They're saying it specifically was happening in England in the 1500's. European texts with numerals started being published in the 13th century but it was a very gradual process over hundreds of years.

[@AltayHunter]

6:22 Brady is actually correct for any number that doesn't already contain a V and only has a single I at the end. For example, you could change XI (11) to XIV (14) by adding a V at the end.

[@acelm8437]

11:33 Apparently there was a play performed on February 29, 1591. Did they have different leap years back then?

[@arunabhganodwale1022]

They did use the Julian calendar, probably, the Gregorian was proposed only a decade back; but the leap years were the same. So please someone give a better reply.

[@SlothMothCloth]

While they were indeed using the Julian calendar, and the main difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendar is where the leap years are, the only difference is that in the Gregorian calendar years that are divisible by 100 are NOT leap years UNLESS they are also divisible by 400. So 1591 is not a leap year in either the Gregorian or the Julian calendar. However, I found this on Wikipedia: > In common usage, 1 January was regarded as New Year's Day and celebrated as such, but from the 12th century until 1751 the legal year in England began on 25 March. So 29th of February 1591 in the legal year, which Henslowe seems to be using here, would be 1592 in common usage, which is indeed a leap year.

[@iabervon]

I think the reason marking the ends of numbers was important was that words and units were made of the same symbols. If the gap is a little small and the next word starts with a letter used in Roman numerals, it would be easy to misinterpret.

[@AthAthanasius]

Yup, "one two" -> "i ii" could be misread as a three, but "j ij" wouldn't be.

[@iabervon]

@AthAthanasius I was also thinking of iL. Is that 49, or 1 Pound Sterling? Putting a tail on the end of the number distinguishes them.

[@JavierSalcedoC]

few people know this but Shakespeare was the first non-royal person to own a stake (12.5%) of a theater in the UK, putting together the "content creation" with the "content distribution" for the first time. The Globe was like the iTunes of the time

[@TuorTheBlessedOfUlmo]

Spotify more like. us non apple cult members don't use iTunes.

[@RandomNonsense1985]

@@TuorTheBlessedOfUlmoI used iTunes on my old Windows PC for a while way back in 2007, but gave it up in favor of Winamp.

[@RokStembergar]

This is a wonderful video,for anyone that worked on it, thank you! It was lovely!

[@ThomasRichardson-lj1ig]

I love these videos about the history of mathematics (and science). I hope you'll make more! The Objectivity channel has been great for the same reason.

[@wcsxwcsx]

A fascinating presentation of how the numerals changed. What's also very interesting is how the original Indian numerals morphed into our present-day numerals. It makes perfect sense, though you never noticed it.

[@SparksMaths]

Lovely stuff Brady and Rob! So nice to glimpse humanity wrestling with numbers from 400 years ago

[@rob-paulson]

I don't know why i never thought of it but i had no idea the switch from roman numerals was that late! Great stuff.

[@rikschaaf]

10:58 He made a mistake in the multiplication, not in the final addition. 3+0 = 3, 0+8+5 does equal 3 (carry 1) and 1+7+6+4 = 8 (carry 1), so that would be correct. The problem is the 8 in 24680. That should be a 9, because 2x5 = 0 *_(carry 1),_* 2x4 *_+1_* = 9 (not 8). So he forgot to carry the 1 there. The number 10 was definitely his weak spot :D

[@BUFU1610]

Indeed. The carried one comes from the 12345x2.

[@johnredberg]

I had to chuckle at the "scripty one" with the "long tail" that took a long time to disappear. Guess what, it many handwritten scripts it hasn't disappeared 🙂 In German-speaking countries, people still write "one" with a flag, and "seven" with a longer flag and, to be really sure, a bar crossing the stem.

[@equolizer]

I (also German) learned to write 'one' as a diagonal line going up and right from about the middle of the space to the top and then a vertical line down (to be honest not that different from how it looks here: 1, just the diagonal is longer) and 'seven' as a horizontal line at the top going right, followed by a diagonal line going left all the way to the bottom and then cross out the diagonal somewhere in the middle (also like '7', just with a crossed out diagonal to keep it distinguishable from 1 when you write it sloppily)

[@user-qf6yt3id3w]

That is absolutely fascinating. He's heard of a new technique and is playing with it to see how much easier it is to use than the old way of doing things.

[@timduncan6750]

10:28 You make one mistake and hundreds of years later still being called out for it...

[@sharbean]

I honestly don’t know why I did not know when and how the number system shifted. Now I am off to find more details. Thanks for the video!

[@TheJamesRedwood]

7:44 obviously in Europe that tail did not disappear, it is still used today, which is why they need to distinguish the seven by putting a horizontal line though the vertical part of the number.

[@Akronymus_]

at around 10:30 ... Placeholder zeros? We certainly don't use them over here in austria. So that came as a surprise to me.

[@John_Ridley]

I wasn't taught them in the US either

[@mytube001]

Same in Sweden.

[@culwin]

In the US, I learned to use them as a kid, but we probably stopped using them by the time we were in 6th grade.

[@ailaG]

Same, Israel

[@rmsgrey]

They're the sort of thing that teachers put in to make it easier to see what's happening, and get used by people who don't do much hand calculation, but which get quietly dropped by anyone actually working with numbers as so much wasted ink.

[@keaton718]

This kind of history is best, where you can see what people were actually writing back then and you can almost read it with modern English skills.

[@OlliWilkman]

I can't say for sure about Shakespeare's times, but comparing the three pounds made by the Shakespeare play to some examples of the value of money a hundred or so years later (from Liza Picard's book "Restoration London"). In the 1660s, one penny would buy you a loaf of bread, or a pound of cheap cheese, or a few herrings. A pound of bacon was nine pence. A roast beef dinner for four in an inn was five shillings. A pair of boots cost 30 shillings. Samuel Pepys paid £24 for a silk suit at some point. A servant or maid earned about £4 per year (960 pence), a shopkeeper or tradesman about £10 per year, a layer £22 per year.

[@widmo206]

That was for the "posh" seats He mentions just after that regular people paid a penny

[@OlliWilkman]

@@widmo206 Yeah, the three pounds was the recorded total for the "posh seats". In a 1660s theatre, the expensive seats were four shillings (48 pence) in a box or one shilling (12 pence) in the gallery.

[@egodreas]

Those numbers are really interesting! A typical loaf of bread is about £1.75 today, and you would be hard pressed to find any cheese for less than £3/pound. But if we say that a penny in the 1660s is about £2 today, then the lawyer's annual salary would correspond to only £10,000 today. Or conversely, if we normalize the conversion on a lawyer's salary of £50,000 (which is the current average), that would mean that a loaf of bread in 1660 was worth almost £10.

[@_Wombat]

@@egodreas it makes sense to me that lawyers are more in demand in today's society than they were back in the 1500s.

[@100percentSNAFU]

Things tend to get out of whack in terms of monetary value the further you go back. For example, a coke or a cup of coffee 100 years ago would have been a nickel (5 pennies) in the United States, but today is closer to $3, however inflation has not been 60x in the last 100 years, probably closer to 20x. Yet things like electronics and more modern things have actually come way down in price. A new color television in the 1980's probably would have cost about $500 in 1980's dollars, for what would be considered today a very small screen and obviously an inferior picture. You can go pick up a 40" flat screen today for under $200 if you shop around a bit. $500 in 1980 would be like almost $2500 today.

[@judychurley6623]

The 'tail' on the 1 is still very prominent here in Italy.

[@haraldmilz8533]

And in Germany.

[@EminAnimE1]

And in Portugal.

[@qazsedcft2162]

And in Poland.

[@benespection]

And in Belgium.

[@BigMcLargeChungus]

And everywhere else but US/UK, I'd bet.

[@softy8088]

7:40 I was taught to always write a 1 with the top serif. Never had a problem until one day I was filling out a form at an office and the receptionist got snippy with me that I had "written the date wrong". I hadn't, she'd just assumed my 1 was a 7 (despite my writing an actual 7 nearby, again the way I'd been taught, with a crossbar). When I told her that was a 1, she said in an annoyed and condescending voice that my 1's look like 7's, then made a point of thickly scribbling a fat vertical line over it. Anyway, all this to say, that one looks perfectly fine to me and it does *not* look like a 7.

[@mcv2178]

Draw a foot serif on a one if you draw the top serif, that is what I do. And I write months in letters, cos 12 10 2024 means December or October, to an American or a Brit. But everyone can figure out Dec 10 2024!

[@benespection]

I grew up in Australia, but now live in Europe, so I had to start adding the serif on the 1. I've always written a line/bar through the 7 though for clarity since my handwriting is awful, but I can totally appreciate your story as I've made the same mistake when I've forgotten to switch back to my old habits for forms in Australia or the UK!

[@100percentSNAFU]

I write a figure 4 (like you see it here in text rather than an open top like many people use) and have been accused on several occasions of my 4's looking like 9's 😂

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

You made a mistake in explaining the mistake. The missed carried 1 wasn't on the first line, multiplying 3 by 12345, but in the 2nd line multiplying 2 by 12345. He forgot to carry the 1 when he multiplied 5 by 2 to get 10. The 8 when multiplying 4 by 2 should have that 1 added to it to become a 9.

[@Posby95]

Exactly. I was getting so confused about the man's explanation.

[@werdwerdus]

thank you ❤

[@DragoniteSpam]

I think we need a name for this. How about Parker Multiplication?

[@benespection]

8:40 The dots on top of the 1's are not because he's romanised them, it's surely because as he's done the addition these dots represent the carry over. I do the same thing since it's faster and smaller than writing a 1.

[@rschroev]

That's what I thought too. But are they in the right place for that? I must admit I didn't do the effort of checking that.

[@phu010]

When I was at school (many, many years ago) I was taught when adding up to put a dot over the appropriate column if I needed to carry one. In the case of the £211/9/0 I think the dots are carries.

[@jimmyzhao2673]

I was taught to use dots for the carry as well.

[@davidmilhouscarter8198]

8:29 Do you know why the symbol for pounds is L? Why the abbreviation is lbs.? Libra or libras (plural) is Latin for the word pound.

[@Certamaniac]

The OED suggests that the etymology for "Box office" was because it was the office where you sold private box seating at a theatre, not because a box collected the payments.

[@robynduckworth4160]

Number systems are great - it's fascinating how different cultures have developed different systems to count and then to make their way of writing those numbers simpler.

[@marksteers3424]

At 11:00 - surely it is the mulitply by 2 that is wrong - it should be 24690

[@MattMcIrvin]

The way he writes the long multiplication problem, without the trailing zeroes, is the way I learned it.

[@uuu12343]

This video is fascinating, absolutely stunning how much maths the everyday man - you, and I - are doing even for fun and you would never know until maybe a thousand years later

[@xyz.ijk.]

I've watched this a few times, this is one of my favorite episodes.

[@The_Omegaman]

I like these historical math videos. Keep them coming.

[@mikmop]

Just as an aside, the town of Dulwich in South London, known for Dulwich College, was the eponymous town (aka namesake town) for the suburb of Dulwich Hill, in Sydney, Australia, which is where I live. It is a suburb known for its Federation-style homes, which even though it has nothing to do with this video, I thought was an interesting piece of trivia given that I lived here.

[@Adileigh23]

Seeing that book where both numbering systems were used interchangeably was amazing-it’s such a unique glimpse into history. It’s interesting to think about how societies transition between systems and how we’re still living through that process in some ways today!

[@Science4Real]

From blending Roman and Indo Arabic numerals to small calculation errors, it all reveals the clumsiness and uncertainty of a generation starting to familiarize itself with modern numbers. These historical “ink stains” are truly precious and full of life.

[@codycast]

2:40 why does the screen shake with random zooming in/out? Is the camera guy shaking it on purpose and actually pushing the zoom in and out? Or is it done after recording for some design decision?

[@UffDaDan]

Perspective warp stabilizer in video editing software?

[@pesqair]

it’s “artistic”

[@codycast]

@ it’s “nauseating” :-)

[@thekinginyellow1744]

@@codycast If this nauseates you, I strongly recommend that you *never* watch "The Blair Witch Project".

[@sylvainlefebvre8099]

At 08:39, those not dots on top of the 1, but the carries that are marked by a dot, the 2 + 1 + carry was obvious. No other 1 have dot on top...

[@Juan-qv5nc]

For a moment I also thought that those dots were carries but it made no sense to not write the one on top of the leftmost 2, unless the writer had forgot it. However, I checked the video and at 3:38 the dots appear over the 1. They also appear thereafter. Therefore, those dots are not carries, they are part of the 1. Go figure.

[@kuronosan]

@@Juan-qv5nc Have you considered they are carries in one context and not carries in another.

[@heaslyben]

The writer might have been enjoying a little "pun", making the carries look like Roman dots.

[@jamestappin4741]

Surely the dots in the addition at about 9:10 are the carried ones from the previous column.

[@heaslyben]

I agree completely, but please don't call me Shirley.

[@Vccv-m8p]

Another fantastic video from this channel. Love it

[@090darknight]

The bar in the "1" in handwriting is the normal here in Germany and I think many other European countries too. We make an extra line across at the 7 like a wonky plus with a ribbon 😅 I kinda like that more then the "I" as a one, cause it has somehow more structure as a symbol imo 😅

[@tomgidden]

Mmm... in France I've seen the '1' bar go all the way down to the baseline -- /| -- so it's sometimes longer (by Pythagoras) than the upstroke. I write a normal 1 with a short bar or no bar, but I always cross my 7 as well. And sometimes my zeroes, but that's more a programmer thing!

[@100percentSNAFU]

​@@tomgiddenI'm an accountant and I put the slash through zeroes, in fact a lot of us do. Not even sure why as we are working mostly with numbers and not letters, as normally you would do so to avoid confusion with the letter "O". We also use parentheses () for negative numbers instead of a minus sign.

[@TurtleMarcus]

You can really see the transition in numbers in the Book of Common Prayer, the official ritual of the Church of England. In the "Table & Kalendar" section, the book lists all the Bible chapter readings assigned to each date of the year and to each major feast. Lots of tables with numbers, in other words. In the first edition from 1549, it's almost all Roman numerals. In the definite 1662 edition, it's basically all Arabic numerals. And in all the printings inbetween these two, you can see how Arabic numerals slowly take over in the tables.

[@numberphile]

Patrons can enjoy some extra pictures and scans from this video here: www.patreon.com/posts/115548802

[@EebstertheGreat]

7:37 Well, that form never really did go away in some places, did it? That seems pretty typical in France. Certainly it looks more like a French 1 than a French 7.

[@damjanjerina6812]

Yes. Looks like a perfectly fine 1 to me. We add a little line to 7 so it is not mistaken for 1.

[@boumbh]

I'm French, you can't say that it disappeared, rather say that some people around the world wrongfuly forgot about it. 😂

[@11Kralle]

If you look a medieval manuscripts, the pagination - if present at all - and other instances of numbering always show a 'j' after a row of 'I' ("3" usually written 'iij'). It is also to be seen in printed publications.

[@kaiboshvanhortonsnort359]

Great stuff. Glimpsing into everyday life in a past few of us can visualize.

[@coastofkonkan]

Excellent. The Devnagari script (Abugaida script) is also equally elegant that bi one would ever have pronunciation troubles.

[@GoetiaTV]

What an incredible artifact. One of those concepts I never would’ve thought about, but when pointed out is astounding. And it being theatre-related is icing on the cake.

[@doglover31418]

There's a church at Piddlehinton in Dorset with the date 1497 carved into the west wall. That's how it's written; 1497.

[@chrisdaignault9845]

To be fair, that’s not a guarantee the number itself was carved in 1497.

[@davidgroskind3233]

The math textbook used in Shakespeare's school years begins with a conversion table showing the equivalent of the new Arabic numbers to the better-known Roman numerals. The table reads 10 signifies X, 5 signifies V, 1 signifies I. Because there is no equivalent to zero in Roman numerals, the last line of the table is "0 signifies nothing." Shakespeare used it as the last line of the Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow soliloquy in Macbeth, a phrase that would have been familiar to every schoolchild.

[@sidneyfloss9059]

Very interesting ! but a whole video on how was made the decimal system would be awesome

[@heaslyben]

I love all this! At 8:36 I think the little dots on top of the ones in 211 are the carries! They might also be a pun on Roman numerals, but the other ones in this example don't have dots.

[@MattMcIrvin]

The way people in Europe did complex calculations before the Indo-Arabic numerals were imported was to use an abacus, which was sometimes a bead-frame abacus of the type still widely used today, but often instead a table with lines drawn on it to represent the place value, on which you would put counters (sort of like poker chips) and move them around. That gave you the computing power of place value, with the disadvantage that it was physically cumbersome and there was no permanent paper trail (but paper was expensive). When the new numerals started being introduced in the Middle Ages, there was some rivalry between the "abacists" who did things the old way and the "algorists" who used the new numerals and calculated on paper.

[@evanbasnaw]

This is fascinating. I'm a numbers guy and a calligraphy enthusiast. I'm totally out of my depth trying to read these numbers on the page. Makes me wonder what people would think of my scratchpad 400 years down the road if they happened upon it.

[@dscott6629]

Thank You!! I've often wondered about the process and time taken to switch over from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals. Rather shocked, however, to learn it only occurred in the sixteenth century. Would have thought it happened much earlier, sometime around the peak of the Omayyad Caliphate some centuries before.

[@mikew6644]

What a fun story! Have never thought about transition before

[@boredgrass]

I venture: Mathematics existence is intermediary. It comes into life when people think about it or talk to each other about it and it flourishes when we do it with curiosity, kindness, decency and humour.

[@TheGreatAtario]

A video that qualifies as both Numberphile and Objectivity

[@dcseain]

I grew up in a house in which all the clocks had Roman numerals. I had to learn to read clocks with Indo-Arabic numbers all over again when I started school at age 5.

[@Mark_LaCroix]

Hilariously, Google's auto-captions for this transcribe "Henry the sixth" to "Henry VI 6." Even today we're dealing with odd intersections of Roman and Arabic numerals!

[@chaotischekreativitat9391]

It's a bit off-topic, but I noticed that there are very interesting Numberphile videos about some of the Millenial problems while other problems seem to be not covered at all. I'd absolutely love to see explanatory videos about e.g. the Hodge conjecture and really hope that they will be uploaded one day 🤞

[@nachis04]

The example of unit systems coexisting is a good example of things transitioning as needed and fluidly. Another good example is that we are still using Roman numerals today

[@HolySoliDeoGloria]

6:02 In Greek, a final sigma takes a different form. Four Hebrew letters have different final forms. I don't know any more about why this is, but it is not an isolated practice.

[@andrewglick6279]

There are 5 Hebrew letters with final forms: ך:כ, ן:נ, ם:מ, ץ:צ, ף:פ (hopefully this renders correctly, right to left and left to right languages in the same line are tough sometimes). As far as I know, it's just a stylistic thing. They are sometimes used to fill in the 500-900 gap after the main Hebrew numbering system stops at 400 with ת.

[@thalarides]

At 3:40, does the top line read ‘29 of february 1591’? You can also see it clearly at 3:16 between ‘28 of february’ and ‘1 of march’. But 1591 wasn't a leap year.

[@therealax6]

For a few centuries, the year in England started on the 25th of March. The actual date would be 29 February 1592, which was leap. (Note that this is also a Julian date, so the actual _actual_ date would've been 10 March 1592, but that's a story for another day.)

[@richardminnich4249]

Roman numerals are like spelling each number as a separate word, without a logical relationship to each other that was obvious - especially when the numerals are long. Modern mathematics really needs to have the indo-Arabic numbers. That and the addition of the zero! LOL

[@GabrielHawkPot]

It looks like the dots above the addition at 9:24 are the carried '1's from the previous column rather than romanised styling, as the 11 in the shillings column doesn't have them and the carried ones aren't marked anywhere else.

[@TheFlyingJester]

At 9:16 I wonder if those 1's are romanized, or if those dots are the carries?

[@chrisbrocknc]

In the example of dude's arithmatic @9:12 of the video, could the dots above the ones have been added to show the carried 1? Because, @9:48 they are missing.

[@Oh_Nanners]

@9:15 so the dots on the ones suspiciously coincide with the carried over ones...

[@rocketman584]

But there isn't one on top of the 2.

[@IanZainea1990]

Was thinking the same! Haha

[@GroovingPict]

The j as 1 at the end in lowercase Roman numerals lasted well into the 19th century I believe, and is more like a flourish than anything else. Remember that I and J were not seen as separate letters until relatively recently. Same with U and V

[@karl-linus-amsler]

In German you still have the phrase "Ein X für ein U vormachen" - "To make an X out of an U" when somebody tries to fool you. As the V for 5 could be changed easily into an X for 10 and suddenly you had to pay a higher price than initially agreed.

[@InventorZahran]

C = century = 100 D = demi-millennium? = 500 M = millennium = 1,000

[@jonathanrichards593]

11:32 - at least three performances of The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe are listed there in Feb-Mar 1591, quite soon after it was written. Fascinating, thank you.

[@camc7416]

Thanks for sharing these awesome videos about the coolest tool in the human aresnal, mathematics!!

[@tristanridley1601]

It's amazing it took 1000 years for Hindu numerals to make it to England. Fascinating to see humans learning the new better system.

[@ulfy01]

That book is so damn fascinating, that was fantastic!

[@ShaneBaker]

I loved this. Thank you!

[@Piemasteratron]

Love the j at the end and the looping x

[@joruss]

That addition at 8:26 why there aren't dots over "11" in 2nd row tho? Wouldn't they rather mean to remember to add 1 in the column with dot? I do something like that (but just write 1 above instead)

[@reedr7142]

“I can’t fault his algebra.” That was great.