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The Historical development of number and number systems

The document outlines the historical development of number systems, starting with the Egyptians and their hieroglyphic numeration, followed by the Babylonians' base-60 system, and the contributions of the Maya and Romans. It discusses the introduction of zero, fractions, negative numbers, and complex numbers, highlighting key mathematicians and their ideas throughout history. The evolution of these concepts reflects the growing understanding and acceptance of various numerical systems in mathematics.

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31 views

The Historical development of number and number systems

The document outlines the historical development of number systems, starting with the Egyptians and their hieroglyphic numeration, followed by the Babylonians' base-60 system, and the contributions of the Maya and Romans. It discusses the introduction of zero, fractions, negative numbers, and complex numbers, highlighting key mathematicians and their ideas throughout history. The evolution of these concepts reflects the growing understanding and acceptance of various numerical systems in mathematics.

Uploaded by

djkeyur007
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Historical development of

number and number systems

BY LAM TRAN
Egyptians (3000-1000 B.C.)

Two numeration systems


Improved tally system “Hieroglyphics”
Their systems were based on groupings of 10
Add and Double
Used their numeration system for
measurement
Babylonians (2000-200B.C.)

Number system based on grouping of 60


Position System
Writings was on clay tablets
Biggest Problem was spacing between the
position
Towards the end they used dot to separate
their numbers
Maya (300 B.C.) & Romans
Similar to Similar to the
Babylonians Egyptian system
No problems with Larger numbers were
spacing difficulty written by putting a
Number grouping bar over
based on 20 Subtractive device
An odd use of 18
Place Value- Zero

Place value started with the Babylonians with


their use of their dot.
Based 10 place value system started with the
Hindus(600 A.D.)
Hindu recognized zero as a number
Arabs (9th century) adopted the Hindus system
Indian Word Sunya- absence of quanity
Mahavira wrote that number multiplied by zero
will result in zero
Bhaskara declared a number divided by zero will
have infinite quanity
Zero (cont.)

Even in 16th and 17th century some


mathematicians still didn’t consider zero as a
number
Thomas Harriot began to use this idea in
solving algebraic equations
Descartes popularized Harriot’s idea
18th century zero grew to a place holder to
number for algebraic equations
Fractions

Early use of fractions from Egyptian’s idea of


“parts”
Babylonians extended their base sixty system to
include fractions
Greece used a system similar to Egyptian
systems of “parts”
Russian had a unit-fraction method
Chinese mathematicians thought about fractions
similar to our in their Nine Chapters on
Mathematical Art
Chinese avoid using improper fractions
Negative Numbers

Brahmagupta (7th Century), Indian


mathematician, recognized that negative
number can be treated as debt
Bhaskara ignore the negative roots because
at the time there wasn’t a clear
understanding of negative roots
Acceptance of negative numbers began in
17th century
Descartes called negative roots “false roots”
Negative Numbers (cont.)

Isaac Newton began to call negative numbers


less than nothing
Euler treated negative numbers as debts and
interpret that product of two negative
numbers is a positive number
There were still doubters even in the higher
ranks of the mathematic community
The move to abstraction made negative
numbers more acceptable
Complex Numbers

Early times if the quadratic formula lead to


square root of a negative number then you
have no solution
Cardano noticed this problem but didn’t
know what to do about it
Rafael Bombelli invented a new language to
treat these negative radicals
Bombelli’s work showed that sometimes the
square roots of a negative number can be
used to find real solutions
Complex Number (cont.)

Euler used complex numbers a lot, but didn’t


resolve the issue of what they were
Argand suggested to represent imaginary
numbers geometrically on a plane
Gauss proposed the same ideas as Argand
and showed it could be useful in mathematics
Questions?

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