On 2017-06-16, at 12:19, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > TGIF. With due respect to the view that Indian (Hindi? Sanskrit?) via Arabic > numerals were the progenitor of our modern big-endian bias, I'd like to point > out that Roman numerals--remember them you old dudes?--are apparently > big-endian. Lord knows who invented that convoluted system, but it persisted > in academia and in commerce for centuries. > Roman numerals belong in the Archaeology department, not in the Mathematics department. Except for copyright notices; we can only hope they get all better soon.
> Friday off topic. I read somewhere that at the time of American independence > circa 1776, it was de rigueur for an educated person to be able to do > *arithmetic* in Roman numerals. You could not otherwise claim to be properly > schooled. A footnote on the whimsy of stodgy education standards. > The abacus or soroban was a technology of choice in much of the Eastern Hemisphere until the advent of pocket-sized calculators. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
