Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 12 views

    11solution To The Ancient Number Problem

    Uploaded by

    Andreas Long
    The document describes an ancient number system using symbols like sticks, fish, and horseshoes that represent powers of four. It explains that the symbols are added together rather than having positional value, so it takes more symbols to count higher numbers compared to modern decimal system. The key steps are determining that sticks=1, fish=4 sticks, and horseshoes=4 fish. This non-positional base-4 system requires new symbols for higher powers of four like 16, 64, and 256 to count above 20.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content

    You might also like

    11solution To The Ancient Number Problem

    Uploaded by

    Andreas Long
    12 views3 pages
    The document describes an ancient number system using symbols like sticks, fish, and horseshoes that represent powers of four. It explains that the symbols are added together rather than having positional value, so it takes more symbols to count higher numbers compared to modern decimal system. The key steps are determining that sticks=1, fish=4 sticks, and horseshoes=4 fish. This non-positional base-4 system requires new symbols for higher powers of four like 16, 64, and 256 to count above 20.

    Original Description:

    ancientnumber

    Original Title

    11Solution to the Ancient Number Problem

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    The document describes an ancient number system using symbols like sticks, fish, and horseshoes that represent powers of four. It explains that the symbols are added together rather than having positional value, so it takes more symbols to count higher numbers compared to modern decimal system. The key steps are determining that sticks=1, fish=4 sticks, and horseshoes=4 fish. This non-positional base-4 system requires new symbols for higher powers of four like 16, 64, and 256 to count above 20.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    12 views3 pages

    11solution To The Ancient Number Problem

    Uploaded by

    Andreas Long
    The document describes an ancient number system using symbols like sticks, fish, and horseshoes that represent powers of four. It explains that the symbols are added together rather than having positional value, so it takes more symbols to count higher numbers compared to modern decimal system. The key steps are determining that sticks=1, fish=4 sticks, and horseshoes=4 fish. This non-positional base-4 system requires new symbols for higher powers of four like 16, 64, and 256 to count above 20.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Solution to the “Ancient Number System” Problem

    10

    11

    12

    13

    14

    15

    16

    17
    18

    19

    20

    How to figure it out:

    We can tell from the given equations that numerals are formed by addition/grouping. For
    example:

    + =
    We can also tell that the “fish” has a value of four “sticks” and that the “horseshoe” has a
    value of four “fish.”

    =
    Since we are told that we can count from 1 to 20, the lowest value (the stick) must be 1.

    More things to notice:

    The number system is a non-positional base-4 system. That is, each of the symbols is a
    power of 4, and the value of the symbol does not depend on its position, as in our own
    number system. (In our base-10 system positional system, the digit “7” takes on different
    values depending on whether it’s in the “tens” place or the “ones” place.)

    Because this system is non-positional, it requires more and more symbols to count higher
    numbers. Our system, by contrast, allows us to count towards infinity with only 10 digits.
    If we extended the system, we would need to invent symbols for the higher powers of 4,
    such as:

    16

    64
    ★
     256

    You might also like