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Number Systems Glossary

Numerals are symbols used to represent numbers. Common types of numerals include Arabic (0-9), Egyptian, Babylonian, Mayan, Greek, and Roman. A digit is the number of numerical symbols needed to write an integer in a given base, usually base 10. The base of a number system refers to the set of digits used, such as 0-9 in base 10. Numbers can be represented in any base using the appropriate set of digits.

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281 views

Number Systems Glossary

Numerals are symbols used to represent numbers. Common types of numerals include Arabic (0-9), Egyptian, Babylonian, Mayan, Greek, and Roman. A digit is the number of numerical symbols needed to write an integer in a given base, usually base 10. The base of a number system refers to the set of digits used, such as 0-9 in base 10. Numbers can be represented in any base using the appropriate set of digits.

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joe_ochiltree
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Number Systems Glossary

Source: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

Numeral
A numeral is a symbol used to represent a number. Arabic numerals (0-9) are the
ones most commonly used today. Other types, mainly of historical interest,
include Egyptian, Babylonian, Mayan, Greek, and Roman numerals.

"Arabic numerals" are the numerical symbols 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0.


Historically, Indian numerals evolved in Arab usage roughly 1000 A.D., and there
was rare European usage in that period. Common use in Europe took another
four to five centuries, with one highlight being when Fibonacci wrote in his
famous book Liber abaci published in Pisa in 1202,
When my father, who had been appointed by his country as public notary in the customs at Bugia acting for the
Pisan merchants going there, was in charge, he summoned me to him while I was still a child, and having an
eye to usefulness and future convenience, desired me to stay there and receive instruction in the school of
accounting. There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable
teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it, for whatever
was studied by the art in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, in all its various forms.

Digit
The number of digits D in an integer n is the number of numbers in some base
(usually 10) required to represent it. The numbers 1 to 9 are therefore single
digits (in base 10), while the numbers 10 to 99 are double digits.

Base
The word "base" in mathematics is used to refer to a particular mathematical
object that is used as a building block. The most common uses are the related
concepts of the number system whose digits are used to represent numbers and
the number system in which logarithms are defined. It can also be used to refer
to the bottom edge or surface of a geometric figure.

A real number x can be represented using any integer number b ¹ 0 as a base


(sometimes also called a radix or scale). The choice of a base yields to a
representation of numbers known as a number system. In base b, the digits 0, 1,
b-1 ..., are used (where, by convention, for bases larger than 10, the symbols A,
B, C, ... are generally used as symbols representing the decimal numbers 10, 11,
12, ...).

Number
The word "number" is a general term which refers to a member of a given
(possibly ordered) set. The meaning of "number" is often clear from context (i.e.,
does it refer to a complex number, integer, real number, etc.?). Because terms
such as real number, Bernoulli number, and irrational number are commonly
used to refer to nonintegral quantities, however, it is not possible to be entirely
consistent in nomenclature.

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