1 / 7

Greek Numbers and Number Systems

Greek Numbers and Number Systems. Attic System. Paralleled the Roman numbers, symbols lined up in rows Found in Attic (Athens), probably from 7 th century B.C. No zero Base 10 Used to designate values of units, weights and measure. Attic Symbols.

laird
Download Presentation

Greek Numbers and Number Systems

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Greek Numbers and Number Systems

  2. Attic System • Paralleled the Roman numbers, symbols lined up in rows • Found in Attic (Athens), probably from 7th century B.C. • No zero • Base 10 • Used to designate values of units, weights and measure

  3. Attic Symbols • Number was too long for carving in stone or engraving on money • Not able to designate very small or very large numbers • Not useful for the new discoveries in mathematics or astronomy

  4. Ionic • Used from 4th century B.C. • based on 10, no zero until Ptolemy’s time 140 B.C. • Alphabetic ciphered system, giving values to the letters of the alphabet • Twenty-seven characters • Twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet • Plus three obsolete symbols: diagamma, koppa, sampi • Initially capital letters were used • small letters were substituted much latter

  5. Ionic System • Small numbers • Fractions: γ΄=1/3 • Numerator has bar • Large numbers • βΜ = 20,000 • Archimedes number

  6. Examples and calculations • Addition: Greeks would place all numbers of one denomination above one another, vertically. • Multiplication: Greeks began from the highest denominations (left to right), using a distributive law.

  7. Resources • Greek numbers. Retreived 2/10/12. http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/history/gr_count/gr_count.html • How Greek numbers worked. Retreived 2/10/12. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers.html • The Greek Number System. Retreived 2/14/12. http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/topics/num-sys.html#greek

More Related