Abstract
Five ancient numerations are reviewed and their main advantages and drawbacks are compared. The inventions of the numeration of position, of the zero, of the fraction bar, and of decimal numbers required millennia, and ideas from all over the world. Today's mathematicians have more than 10 types of number, but the expression of very large numbers remains unsatisfactory. A clear, simple, and efficient expression for very large and very small numbers is proposed: a numeration by ‘figures and sizes’.
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References
1.See also
Michaelis
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: ‘Going metric – slowly ’, Interdisc. Sci. Rev ., 1994 , 19 , (2 ), 89 –95 .
2.
Neugebauer
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: ‘The exact sciences in antiquity ’; 1957 , Hanover, NH , University Press of New England .