Current Number System

Date: 6/13/96 at 9:53:11
From: dhautree
Subject: Current number system

Do you think our number system nowadays is sufficient for its uses?

Date: 7/17/96 at 12:43:10
From: Doctor Patrick
Subject: Re: Current number system


Hi!  That's an interesting question.  I may have a biased point of 
view, but I do think our system is sufficient for its uses.  

I'm not really sure what exactly is needed to say that a number system 
is doing a good job, but I guess that it would have to be able to let 
people express the idea of "How many" easily and efficiently so that 
everyone using the system could understand what the other people 
meant.  It would also have to be able to let us do calculations 
without too much trouble.  

Can you think of any other things it would have to be able to do?

Our number system does both of the things I thought were important.  
We can communicate numbers easily and we can do all kinds of math with 
our numbers. One reason for this might be the relative simplicity of 
our system--we only use 10 different symbols for counting 
(0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9) and just mix them up to form new numbers.  
What do you think would happen if we had to use a different symbol for 
every number we wanted to express?  We would need so many different 
symbols that no one could *ever* learn them all.  We only have to 
learn a few, and to learn how to put them together, which makes our
number system easy to learn, understand, and communicate.

What other reasons can you think of as for why our system works well 
(or why it doesn't, if you think it need some improvement)?

-Doctor Patrick,  The Math Forum
 Check out our web site!  http://mathforum.org/dr.math/