I once followed a car with a XIV as part of it's number plate and it set me off thinking, I spent the rest of the journey; about 10 miles, imagining doing maths in Roman numerals.
examples
VI - IV = II
Some apparent logic here but it is superficial, take the bottom V from the top one and the two Is remain.
But then
XI - IV = VII
sort of works. But with
IX - VI = III
any semblance of a pattern breaks down. To say the least it's not very intuitive. Certainly while driving, with all the interruptions where I had to jettison the irrelevant from my mind whenever it got busy and start again I never resolved it.
I can't imagine how they were able to keep numbers untangled to do heavy duty maths with no columns of numbers, no commas or points to assist keeping the proliferation sorted into meanings, no symbol for zero. Working in base ten with three symbols covering up to ten, five to a hundred and six to a thousand. Amazing.
Maybe that is why it fell, but how the hell did they build an empire in the first place?
Do most other people spend any time thinking about ...
examples
VI -
IV =
II
Some apparent logic here but it is superficial, take the bottom V from the top one and the two Is remain.
But then
XI -
IV =
VII
sort of works. But with
IX -
VI =
III
any semblance of a pattern breaks down. To say the least it's not very intuitive. Certainly while driving, with all the interruptions where I had to jettison the irrelevant from my mind whenever it got busy and start again I never resolved it.
I can't imagine how they were able to keep numbers untangled to do heavy duty maths with no columns of numbers, no commas or points to assist keeping the proliferation sorted into meanings, no symbol for zero. Working in base ten with three symbols covering up to ten, five to a hundred and six to a thousand. Amazing.
Maybe that is why it fell, but how the hell did they build an empire in the first place?