Roman | Hindu-Arabic Numerals

November 25th, 2007 | by limeehai |

Roman numerals are written differently from the other number systems.

It represents number with letters (X, I, L, etc).

Example:

    One = I
    Two = II
    Nine = IX
    Twelve = XII
    Twenty-two = XXII

However, in the current era of maths computation, we have chosen to use the Hindu-Arabic ways of number presentation. This is now the accepted and standardised way in our number system.

But why the change?

Other than for some cosmetic and artistic applications, roman  numbering are seldom used nowadays. The roman numeral is disadvantaged in that it requires more characters to represent some numbers.

An example is the number 28.

Roman numeral is XXVIII (6 characters needed).
Hindu-Arabic numeral is 28 (2 characters only!).

Its disadvantage handicaps the printing industries in that more printing hard characters are needed to represent the same number. More efforts and paper space are needed. Slowly, with times, printers were forced to switch to the more efficient way of using the Hindu-Arabic numerals.

Another disadvantage of roman numeral is that they are hard to mathematically operate upon. Simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are not done as simply as that of the Hindu-Arabic. Cautious and taxing steps of solving maths has to be taken care when using roman numerals.

Try adding VIII + XXVIII compared to 8 + 28.  We need to count the “I”and “X” to add the roman numbers and that is only for 2-number addition!

With times, therefore, roman numerals are phased out in favour of the easily presented Hindu-Arabic numerals.

  1. 2 Responses to “Roman | Hindu-Arabic Numerals”

  2. By dominique on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply

    how can i slove this problem… please if possible, explain how you got the answer. Second, question with alot of numbers do you add, substract or multiply.? thank you for you time.. question— 1) MCMLXXXII=

  3. By limeehai on Mar 2, 2008 | Reply

    Hi dominique,

    First question:
    MCMLXXXII is roman.
    To translate it to Arabic, we need to know the following:
    I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000

    Another point to note is that when we encounter any “smaler” letter that precedes a “bigger” letter, example,the case here, “CM” where C is smaller (100) before the M (1000), we need to subtract this “C” away.

    Solution is:
    MCMLXXXII= 1000 - 100 + 1000 + 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 2 = 1982

    Second Question:
    Do we add, subtract or multiply depends on the numbers. Multiplication in Romanic seems to be almost impossible. That is why the Arabic version is now the preferred system.

    Thanks for coming to my site.

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