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Maths in the Early Islamic World

In Our Time

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How Did the Modern Number System Develop in the Middle East?

The babylonians had a base 60 system for their numbers. The indians developed essentially our modern way of writing numbers. Each symbol, when we write it down, has more than one piece of information associated with it. When i write down 31, the three is indicating both some of threeness and because it's got a one after it, that it's three tens rather than just three one. That system was invented by the indians. We don't know exactly when. Maybe 203 hundred, a d something around that time period.

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