Roman Numerals
 

OK OK...I know it's late and I am tired, but a random question that I cannot answer....

How in Hell did the Romans express fractions?

per centum

they didn't. in those days life was all or nothing :)

Fractions, hell! How did they express Zero?

It's all Greek to me...! :confused:

Randy

III.I IV I V IX II........

why did the chicken cross the road?

which came first, the chicken or the farmer?

In medicine, what did the Romans call an intravenous needle, or IV? Four, perhaps? :D

-Z.

boo, hiss :D

Hehehe.... what about the movie, Malcolm 10? (I mean Malcolm X)

Am I killing ya yet?!?
-Z-man.

I/IV II/III IV/V I/M I/X
Tough getting all those digits on a scale or dial caliper though :)

On a more serious note ... from mathforum.org (quick search finds the geeks);

Did the Romans use fractions?

The Romans didn't have a standard way to write fractions using their numerals. Instead, they just wrote out the word for the fraction: for example, two-sevenths was "duae septimae" and three-eighths was "tres octavae." The Romans did not have a word for every imaginable fraction: how often do you need to say thirty-three seventieths? If necessary, they would probably have said something like, "thirty-three seventieth parts," or "triginta tres septuagensimae partes."

The Romans did most of their practical calculations with fractions by using the uncia. The uncia started out as 1/12 of the as, a unit of weight (the word uncia is related to our word "ounce"), but it soon came to mean 1/12 of anything. You can add up twelfths to make halves, thirds, or quarters, so the uncia was fairly versatile. When they wanted smaller fractions, the Romans usually cut the uncia into smaller parts. The system is very similar to measuring length in inches and fractions of the inch: you might not measure an object's length exactly, but you can still come very close.

There were Roman and medieval symbols for multiples of the uncia. The semis, which was six unciae, or one-half, was often represented by this symbol: . However, uncia symbols were never standardized, and not everybody used them. Some late medieval writers even substituted the modern fraction bar.

This, BTW, is one of the big reasons the Romans never went far in math. They didn't have good notation for writing numbers, or (as some math historians theorize) they would have invented the calculus many years before Newton (and that other guy that nobody likes).

Dan

Thanks.

Makes sense to me. You think of concepts like "PI" and the Romans had wheels (circles) and wonder how they measuret circumference as a function of diameter to even build an arch or a spoked wheel!!

eyeball, baby. eyeball

i took latin for 2 years (so far) and it does make math a little difficult...

This thread is (50)A(1000)E.

:)