A brief history of numerical systems - Alessandra King
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-numerical-systems-alessandra-king 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... and 0. With just these ten symbols, we ...
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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and zero. With just these ten symbols, we can write any rational number imaginable. But why these particular symbols? Why ten of them? And why do we arrange them the way we do? Numbers have been a fact of life throughout recorded history. Early humans likely counted animals in a flock or members in a tribe using body parts or tally marks. But as the complexity of life increased, along with the number of things to count, these methods were no longer sufficient. So as they developed, different civilizations came up with ways of recording higher numbers. Many of these systems, like Greek, Hebrew, and Egyptian numerals, were just extensions of tally marks with new symbols added to represent larger magnitudes of value. Each...
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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and zero. With just these ten symbols, we can write any rational number imaginable. But why these particular symbols? Why ten of them? And why do we arrange them the way we do? Numbers have been a fact of life throughout recorded history. Early humans likely counted animals in a flock or members in a tribe using body parts or tally marks. But as the complexity of life increased, along with the number of things to count, these methods were no longer sufficient. So as they developed, different civilizations came up with ways of recording higher numbers. Many of these systems, like Greek, Hebrew, and Egyptian numerals, were just extensions of tally marks with new symbols added to represent larger magnitudes of value. Each...
