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| Messages 1 - 9 of total 9 in this topic |
WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 5, 2006 - 02:35pm PT
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Someone on this site may be able to answer the following: I've always taken pride in my ability to read Roman Numerals. It also impresses the younger types who have suffered the deficiencies of the modern educational system. However, does anyone know how the Romans computed with that system? Their engineering was superb, and they had to do all basic arithmetic, geometry etc. How did they manage the algorithms?
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UncleDoug
Social climber
N. lake Tahoe
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Thinking of only calculating in Roman vs. ARABIC numerals?
Phish on!
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 5, 2006 - 02:53pm PT
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The Romans didn't have place value in their system. Seems to me knowledge of Arabic(Phoenician) numerals and/or the abacus would have required that, and they wouldn't have used their cumbersome system.
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mcKbill
climber
Grundy Center
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What is the roman numeral for zero?
--NOSTYLE EDIT--
Forgive me, but on my break I just had to see if this could be done in the SAS programming language. Not surprisingly, the nice folks at the SAS institute have created a handy Roman numeral format that can be used to SIMULATE calculations.
Note: the data are Arabic numerals, but SAS format 'roman32.' makes them appear to be Roman numerals... another classic solution looking for a problem:
data roman_sasmath;
input x y;
z = x + y;
format x y z roman32.;
put x= @16 y= @32 z=;
cards;
1 7
30 90
222 987
;
run;
...yields this:
x=I y=VII z=VIII
x=XXX y=XC z=CXX
x=CCXXII y=CMLXXXVII z=MCCIX
NOTE: The data set WORK.ROMAN_SASMATH has 3 observations and 3 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
real time 0.01 seconds
cpu time 0.00 seconds
So, if you want to do math like this just get the SAS. I recommend SAS learning edition, or enrolling in classes at a university that has a nice site license agreement.
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cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
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There wasn't one. It was just implied.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Why were they roamin'? Shouldn't they be rounded up or something? Or would that be too fractious?
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 5, 2006 - 05:15pm PT
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I thank you all. The ST Institution for Acquired Arcane Knowledge or STIAAK has come through again. Little does the world know that all wisdom and knowledge resides here.
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| Messages 1 - 9 of total 9 in this topic |
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