NUMBER SYSTEM

MATHEMATICS
{HOLIDAY HOMEWORK}

By – Aarushi Patidar
 Origin And Development Of Number
Systems
The first method of counting has been argued to be counting on fingers.[] This evolved into sign language for the
hand-to-eye-to-elbow communication of numbers which, while not writing, gave way to written numbers.
Tallies made by carving notches in wood, bone, and stone were used for at least forty thousand years. These tally
marks may have been used for counting elapsed time, such as numbers of days, lunar cycles or keeping records of
quantities, such as of animals.

The earliest known writing for record keeping evolved from a system of counting using small clay tokens. The
earliest tokens now known are those from two sites in the Zagros region of Iran: Tepe Asiab and Ganj-i-Dareh
Tepe.[6]


To create a record that represented "two sheep", they selected two round clay tokens each having a + sign baked
into it. Each token represented one sheep. Representing a hundred sheep with a hundred tokens would be
impractical, so they invented different clay tokens to represent different numbers of each specific commodity, and
by 4000 BC strung the tokens like beads on a string.[7] There was a token for one sheep, a different token for ten
sheep, a different token for ten goats, etc. Thirty-two sheep would be represented by three ten-sheep tokens
followed on the string by two one-sheep tokens.
 How Number Systems Evolved In Various
Civilizations ?
• The city of Sumer in Mesopotamia developed its number system
well before its script, which it invented around 3000 BC. Its number
system used the main base 60 and the auxiliary base 10. Sumerian
writing began as a pictorial script, and numbers were originally
depicted on clay tablets as images of the corresponding pebbles.

• Like all number systems of early civilizations, the Sumerian number

system developed as an absolute number system. The only such
system still in use is the Roman number system. Roman numbers
are much easier to read than Sumerian numbers because they use
the decimal system familiar to us, and because they are not written
in pictorial form but use letters of the alphabet. 
 How Number Systems Evolved In Various
Civilizations ?
The invention of the place-value number system is one of the greatest achievements of the human
mind. For thousands of years humans did not know it and had to work with absolute number
systems.

An example from the American continent comes from the Aztec civilization, which flourished
between 1300 and 1500 AD. Like all other South and Central American civilizations the Aztec
number system used the main base 20. But unlike the Maya civilization it did not use an auxiliary
base, which made Aztec numbers rather cumbersome. Aztec written numbers therefore invariably
involved counting.

The absolute value number system that formed the basis of European number development was
the system invented in Egypt. Egyptian numbers used the decimal system without an auxiliary
base. The smaller base made Egyptian numbers somewhat easier to read than Aztec numbers.

The fact that the pictographs for Egyptian numerals all relate to features of the Nile valley are a
clear indication that the Egyptian number system was an independent local invention. It developed
at about the same time as the Sumerian number system.
 How Number Systems Evolved In Various
Civilizations ?

A severe problem of absolute value number systems is the difficulty to represent

fractions. The Egyptians were very advanced in this regard, but their system was
still quite restrictive.
Egyptian fractions were always fractions of the unit 1. More complicated fractions had
to be represented as the sum of simple fractions: 13/40 was written as 1/5 (+) 1/8.

Place-value number systems were developed independently in :

 Mesopotamia by the Babylonians (1800 BC)
 China (between 200 BC and 200 AD)
 India (published 28 August 458)
 Central America by the Maya (around 400 - 600 AD)
 How Number Systems Evolved In Various
Civilizations ?
1.At about the time when the Babylonian number system was forgotten in the Middle East, a
new and superior place-value number system was developed in China. It avoided the first of
the Babylonian problems (the question of correct spacing) but shared its second problem: It
did not include a zero.

2.It uses the base 10 and the auxiliary base 5 and represents the numerals 1 - 9 as pictographs of
bamboo sticks.

3.While Chinese and Indian mathematics progressed rapidly in Asia, the Maya civilization of 
Central America developed a place-value number system of its own that included a zero.
Invented around 500 AD, it used the main base 20 and the auxiliary base 5. The numerals were
pictographs of pebbles and sticks. The combination of the base 20 and auxiliary base 5 with
two easily recognizable simple geometrical forms made the Maya numbers very easy to read.

4.The few written documents that survived in the Spanish book burnings testify for the high
development of Maya astronomy and mathematics. The Maya number system was actually
somewhat more complicated than described here because it was tuned specifically to calendar
applications.
Importance Of Zero And Historical Details
It might seem like an obvious piece of any numerical system, but the zero is a
surprisingly recent development in human history. In fact, this ubiquitous symbol
for “nothing” didn’t even find its way to Europe until as late as the 12th century.

Zero’s origins most likely date back to the “fertile crescent” of ancient
Mesopotamia. Sumerian scribes used spaces to denote absences in number
columns as early as 4,000 years ago, but the first recorded use of a zero-like
symbol dates to sometime around the third century B.C. in ancient Babylon.

The Babylonians employed a number system based around values of 60, and they
developed a specific sign—two small wedges—to differentiate between
magnitudes in the same way that modern decimal-based systems use zeros to
distinguish between tenths, hundreds and thousandths. A similar type of symbol
cropped up independently in the Americas sometime around 350 A.D., when the
Mayans began using a zero marker in their calendars.
Importance Of Zero And Historical
Details
These early counting systems only saw the zero as a placeholder—
not a number with its own unique value or properties. A full
grasp of zero’s importance would not arrive until the seventh
century A.D. in India. There, the mathematician Brahmagupta
and others used small dots under numbers to show a zero
placeholder, but they also viewed the zero as having a null value,
called “sunya.” Brahmagupta was also the first to show that
subtracting a number from itself results in zero. From India, the
zero made its way to China and back to the Middle East, where it
was taken up by the mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-
Khowarizmi around 773. It was al-Khowarizmi who first
synthesized Indian arithmetic and showed how the zero could
function in algebraic equations, and by the ninth century the zero
had entered the Arabic numeral system in a form resembling the
oval shape we use today.
Importance Of Zero And Historical Details

The zero continued to migrate for another few centuries

before finally reaching Europe sometime around the 1100s.
Thinkers like the Italian mathematician Fibonacci helped
introduce zero to the mainstream, and it later figured
prominently in the work of Rene Descartes along with Sir
Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz’s invention of calculus.
Since then, the concept of “nothing” has continued to play a
role in the development of everything from physics and
economics to engineering and computing.
 The Concept Of Rational And Irrational
Numbers
Rational and irrational numbers are the complex
form of representation of number in Mathematics.
The rational numbers have properties different
from irrational numbers. A number which is
written in the form of a ratio of two integers is a
rational number whereas an irrational number has
endless non-repeating digits. 
The example of a rational number is 1/2 and of
irrational is π = 3.141. 
 The Concept Of Rational And Irrational
Numbers
• What is Rational number?
• The rational numbers are numbers which can be expressed as a fraction and also as
positive numbers, negative numbers and zero. It can be written as p/q, where q is not
equal to zero.
• Rational word is derived from the word ‘ratio’, which actually means a comparison of
two or more values or integer numbers and is known as a fraction. In simple words, it
is the ratio of two integers.
• Example: 3/2 is a rational number. It means integer 3 is divided by another integer 2.
• What is Irrational Number?
• The numbers which are not a rational number are called irrational numbers. Now, let
us elaborate, irrational numbers could be written in decimals but not in fractions
which means it cannot be written as the ratio of two integers.
• Irrational numbers have endless non-repeating digits after the decimal point. Below is
the example of the irrational number:
• Example: √8=2.828…
Spiral Depiction Of Thedorous Wheel
 Need Of Rationalization And
Importance With Related
•
Terminologies
Although radicals follow the same rules that integers do, it is often difficult
to figure out the value of an expression containing radicals. For example,
you probably have a good sense of how much  and  are, but what about the
quantities  and ? These are much harder to visualize.
• That said, sometimes you have to work with expressions that contain many
radicals. Often the value of these expressions is not immediately clear. In
cases where you have a fraction with a radical in the denominator, you can
use a technique called rationalizing a denominator to eliminate the radical.
The point of rationalizing a denominator is to make it easier to understand
what the quantity really is by removing radicals from the denominators.
 
Need Of Rationalization And Importance
With Related Terminologies
Need Of Rationalization And Importance With Related
Terminologies
 Inference
The art of writing was invented around 3000 BC in Sumer, Mesopotamia.
Numbers were written well before a general script existed. Script symbols for
numbers developed from depictions of clay impressions used to represent numbers in
earlier documents.
All early societies used absolute value number systems.
The sexagesimal system of Sumer was displaced by the decimal system of Egypt.
The development of place-value number systems is one of the greatest achievements
of the human mind.
Babylonian scientists developed the first place-value number system. It had
difficulties separating the places in a number and lacked a zero.
Chinese mathematicians developed a place-value number system that overcame the
spacing problem. It originally lacked a zero, but a sign for zero was eventually
introduced from India.
The Maya civilizations independently developed a place-value number system
including the zero.
 Bibliography
• www.mt-oceanography.info
• en.wikipedia.org
• www.math.wichita.edu
• modelsofexcellence.eleducation.org
• Ifrah, G. (2000) Universal History of
Numbers. John Wiley & Sons. Translated from
Ifrah, G. (1981) Histoire Universelle des
Chiffres, (Seghers).