How Numerals 0 - 9 got their Shape

Wow! That's great!

You hit the bull's eye!!

But do you agree with the Arabian logic??

I have invented a new number....who will be the first to name it???

The present arabic numeralsunable to insert pictures) are based on lines not on angles. No 1 has one line,2 has 2 lines,3 has 3 lines,4 has four lines but 5,6,7,8 I don't understand because 5 is like an oblique circle,6 has two lines,7 is like V,8 is like inverted V but 9 is similar to our 9 while dot represent zero. Our ancestors in India used selected letters from the alphabet to represent numbers even for fractions like 1/4,1/2,3/4.

Could you plz tell us more about the history of Indian alphabets??

<<<<<Our ancestors in India used selected letters from the alphabet to represent numbers even for fractions like 1/4,1/2,3/4.>>>>>>

This seems quite interesting!!

In 1950s, at home, I came across a book written long ago in tamil language in which the page numbers were marked by letters like "K" for 1,"RU" for 5 etc. When I asked my father he said our ancestors used letters for numbers including "LU" for 3/4. I belief the numerals adopted in south india(by dravidans) was not the same in north india(aryans). Other than that I have no evidence.

Did you say your invention was patented??:)

It's quantitatively described as the length of time it takes for a meaningless discussion to take place.....sorry I can't discuss the legal exclusivity status because I forced myself to sign a nondisclosure agreement....but am at liberty to discuss financial terms for usage rights, pending satisfactory naming, of course....

Decudone it is...

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uhm,,,, a base eleven decimal system...... a name............ left out

I know nothing about this subject but it makes no sense to me because...

According to the angle logic you can justify it with many possibilities so how did we end up with the shapes we use today?

There is no Arabian logic. I'm not saying that it's not true, but the link provides no evidence for this at all.

It's interesting, but without evidence to show that it is Arabian in origin, there is nothing to agree or disagree with.

Here is some 'logical' discussion about Arabian numerals....enjoy!

Al'Khwarizmi was an Islamic mathematician who wrote on Hindu-Arabic numerals and was among the first to use zero as a place holder in positional base notation. The word algorithm derives from his name. His algebra treatise Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala gives us the word algebra and can be considered as the first book to be written on algebra.

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Arabic_numerals.html

Here's more on the history of algebra. Good thread. I learned some interesting things I didn't know.

http://www.algebra.com/algebra/about/history/

Just to stir the pot a little

http://www.jefflewis.net/blog/2009/10/origin_of_arabic_numerals_was_1.html

But do you agree with the Arabian logic??

Sort of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

''Calculation method'' is the same everywhere, why doubt it??

''In 825 Al-Khwārizmī wrote a treatise in Arabic, On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, which was translated into Latin from Arabic in the 12th century as Algoritmi de numero Indorum, where Algoritmi, the translator's rendition of the author's name, gave rise to the word algorithm (Latin algorithmus, "calculation method").- ''

'A distinctive West Arabic variant of the symbols begins to emerge around the 10th century in the Maghreb and Al-Andalus, called ghubar ("sand-table" or "dust-table") numerals, which are the direct ancestor of the modern Western Arabic numerals used throughout the world. Ghubar numerals themselves are probably of Roman origin. --wiki''

I don't doubt it.

You had asked about the Arabian logic on the shapes of numbers. Since they originated in India and were adopted by the Arabs......................the Arabian logic doesn't really come into play........................at least with number shapes.

The algebra is quite impressive.

Sure you don't doubt it but the Arabs did pretty well in math, astronomy and some other disciplines before the West found the zest for learning. Indians, yes, and the Chinese too are ancient civilizations and like every civilization they too had their 'days of learning''...

To me science is like a relay race where the winner is not the one who carries the bail to the finishing line but all who ran before him and struggled passed him the bail. The whole team therefore deserves appreciation, doesn't it?

Here you can enjoy reading about one of the relay race members of science,the Arabs

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Arab+contributions+to+science

I don't think we're connecting somehow. The Chinese, the Arabs, Greeks, Mayans,...................................yes, our understanding of everything can be attributed to many different people and cultures.

Yes, more or less the credit for learning goes to all and learning never stops.

Correct. Although I have to admit, the people that discover and invent, have earned a higher place in the scheme of things as far as I'm concerned...............regardless of where they're from.

True....no argument about that.

Each of the ancient civilisations-Chinese,Indian(north/south),Arabic,Roman, Egyptian, Mayan etc should have had their own way of writting numbers. I heard Mayans had written 1000 as a horizontal line and 3 zeros above them horizontally. We need some documentation for each of those civilisation's numerals as proof.

Post it here when you've found it. My project plate is already full.

We need some documentation for each of those civilisation's numerals as proof.

There is ample evidence that shows that the angle theory is a spoof. These numbering systems (and history of the characters used) are well-documented in Wikipedia and elsewhere.

What we in the west call Arabic numerals started as Brahmi numerals. There is no connection at all between "number of angles" and the digits. 6 and 9 in somewhat more modern renditions have always been essentially identical (and the curves in both meet at only one point that could be called a "angle". They do not have anything remotely close to either six or nine angles. I have not seen any archeological evidence that a nine or seven (or most of the others for that matter) was ever drawn as depicted in the video.

Our numbers started out like this:

I have to agree with the Wikipedia article on Brahmi numerals which states "Both suggestions, that the numerals derive from tallies or that they're alphabetic, are purely speculative at this point, with little evidence to decide between them."

This article on the 7 clearly shows that the additional line in the seven is a relatively recent addition to distinguish it from the one. At the point where the 1 and 7 had evolved to their roughly modern appearance, they had the same number of angles: one interior angle. 7, of course, has never been written with a line at the bottom -- this is added only to make the spoof seem plausible.

If you look at numbers as they evolved throughout the ages, there is no point where the angle theory makes any sense at all. Numbers have never been written as shown in the video, and the difference between a 6 and 9 (in terms of number of angles) is incredibly fanciful.

There is loads of evidence to show how numbers were written, and this theory does not show up anywhere in that evidence. The logic of interior angles and exterior angles is haphazard in the theory as well. The logic is also flawed in the fact that if the curves in 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9 are represented as straight lines, then the 0 should be represented as a square. Also, the 4 as drawn and seen in history has 6 angles, not 4 (the four at the cross, plus two remaining in the triangle).

Number 7 is written horizontally in Arabic like < and Urdu whereas the glyph for 8 is expressed by 7 like inverted V.... these similarities or styles seem to denote the evolution the glyphs of numbers went through history.

The line in the middle of 7 is also quite old and was also used by some in the Indo-Pak subcontinent. However, concrete evidence to this fact is not available.

as for number 4 the extra part of the middle line completing the cross may be a result of evolution but 4 written less the additional stroke has only 4 angles. Even if it is written in the other glyph wherein the top vertical lines of 4 are not joined with the downward line stretched straight below also makes 4 angles.

Glyphs seem to have undergone changed due to calligraphic \adventures\ but apparently the Indians and Arabs do seem to have contributing credit to their initial forming.

''Evolution of the glyph

In the beginning, various Hindus wrote 7 more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase J vertically inverted. The western Ghubar Arabs' main contribution was to make the longer line diagonal rather than straight, though they showed some tendencies to making the character more rectilinear. The eastern Arabs developed the character from a 6-look-alike into an uppercase V-look-alike. Both modern Arab forms influenced the European form, a two-stroke character consisting of a horizontal upper line joined at its right to a line going down to the bottom left corner, a line that is slightly curved in some font variants. As is the case with the European glyph, the Cham and Khmer glyph for 7 also evolved to look like their glyph for 1, though in a different way, so they were also concerned with making their 7 more different. For the Khmer this often involved adding a horizontal line above the glyph.^[2] This is analogous to the horizontal stroke through the middle that is sometimes used in handwriting in the Western world but which is almost never used in computer fonts. This horizontal stroke is, however, important to distinguish the glyph for seven from the glyph for one in writings that use a long upstroke in the glyph for 1.

On the seven-segment displays of pocket calculators and digital watches, 7 is the number with the most common glyph variation (0, 6 and 9 also have variant glyphs). Most calculators use three line segments, but on Sharp, Casio, and a few other brands of calculators, 7 is written with four line segments because, in Japan and Korea, 7 is written as ① in the illustration to the right.

While the shape of the 7 character has an ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a descender, as, for example, in .

Most people in Continental Europe,^[3] Latin America, and New England^{[citation needed]} write 7 with a line in the middle ("7"), sometimes with the top line crooked. The line through the middle is useful to clearly differentiate the character from the number one, as these can appear similar when written in certain styles of handwriting. This glyph is used in official handwriting rules for primary school in Russia, Ukraine, Romania and other Slavic countries.^{[4]\'''--wiki}

In running hand German:

(1) has a long tail which looks like inclined (7) so a dash is added to 7 to distinguish between the two digits.

Sometime in IT era difference between different fonts (0) Old Cipher and new zero and (O, o more rounded than zero) wovel a dash was included in zero like theta (Θ)

And problems are from font to font

I always had a line in my '7'. Also when I had a line in the letter 'Z'. I had did this to disguised them from a 1 and a 2 when I was doing math. My Penmanship as always been poor.

• The numbers we write are made up of algorithms (1, 2, 3, 4 , ... etc.) called Arabic Algorithms (created by Arabian in addition to the wonderful unique creation of Zero), to distinguish them from the Roman Algorithms (I, II, III, IV, ... etc.).

• The Arabic Algorithms get their shape based on a logic procedure depends on counting of the number of angles located at that algorithm. Where you can easily find that algorithm 1 contains one angle, algorithm 2 contains two angles, and so on.

• See this PPT file: http://www.4shared.com/file/vkRumVZF/file.html

Regards.

The link you referred to seems not valid.

A detailed account may be read on Arabic numerals

Though different claims by nations are there but The word "Roman" and "Arabic" are clear indication that by whom these were originally conceived,

Another topic of different claims is the Story book "1000 Arabian Nights" insted of all names used in the book are pure Arabic.

Regards.

Can you post the link to the pps file.

Link in 4Shared (still working): http://www.4shared.com/file/vkRumVZF/file.html

Link in Dropbox to the same file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48490928/Arabic%20Numbers.pptx

BTW , in modern Arabic [ and similar uses like Dari] they changed some things so as to confuse outsiders. What looks like a zero, now means five. A backwards three means four. What looks like a seven, now means six.

I dunno, seems a little contrived, especially starting with 7.

Writing Number Seven in Chinese...video.

http://www.ehow.com/video_4402174_write-number-7-chinese-calligraphy.html