The Roman numeral system is beautiful, but difficult?

The Roman numeral system was widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages, however, due to the fact that it was inconvenient to use, today it is practically not used. It was replaced by more simple Arabic numerals, which made arithmetic much simpler and easier.

As a basis in the Roman system, the powers of ten, as well as their half, are taken. In the past, a person did not need to write large and long numbers, so the set of basic figures initially ended in a thousand. Numbers are written from left to right, and their sum denotes a given number.

The main difference is that the Roman numeral system is non-positional. This means that the location of the digit in the number record does not indicate its value. The Roman numeral "1" is written as "I". And now we put the two units together and look at their meaning: "II" is just the Roman numeral 2, while "11" is written in Roman calculus as "XI". In addition to one other basic figures, five, ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred and one thousand are considered, which are denoted V, X, L, C, D and M., respectively.

In the decimal system that we use today, in the number of 1756 the first figure refers to the number of thousands, the second number - hundreds, the third - tens, and the fourth means the number of units. Therefore, it is called a positional system, and calculations with its use are performed by adding the corresponding bits to each other. The Roman numeral system is arranged quite differently: in it the value of the whole number does not depend on its order in the number entry. In order, for example, to translate the number 168 it is necessary to take into account that all the numbers in it are obtained from the basic symbols: if the digit on the left is greater than the number on the right, then these figures are subtracted, otherwise they are added. Thus, 168 will be written in it as CLXVIII (C-100, LX-60, VIII-8). As you can see, the Roman numeral system offers a rather cumbersome number entry, which makes it extremely inconvenient to add and subtract large numbers, not to mention the operations of division and multiplication over them. The Roman system has one more significant drawback, namely the absence of zero. Therefore, in our time it is used exclusively for the designation of chapters in books, the numbering of centuries, solemn dates, where there is no need to carry out arithmetic operations.

In everyday life it is much easier to use a decimal system, the value of the digits in it correlates with the number of angles in each of them. It first appeared in the sixth century in India, and the symbols in it were finally fixed only in the 16th century. In Europe, Indian figures, called Arabic, penetrated due to the work of the famous mathematician Fibonacci. A comma or period is used to separate an integer and fractional part in an Arabic system. But in computers, the binary system of numbers is most often used , which spread in Europe thanks to the work of Leibniz, which is due to the fact that computer technology uses triggers that can only be in two working positions.