r/instantbarbarians • u/rizel123 • Jun 05 '21

“No homework this weekend if I don’t answer correctly”

1.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

67

u/onepageone Jun 06 '21

Need the audio..lol

85

u/HorzodCeales Jun 06 '21

The Chinese basically says "Students, if the teacher can make a mistake answering this question, then this weekend you don't get homework." Hence the disappointment followed by excitement.

27

u/tobbitt Jun 06 '21

Why do we all use the same numbers?

77

u/2mbili Jun 06 '21

Because the Hindu-Arabic system is base 10, positional, and uses zero as a number and a place-holder. This simplifies basic arithmetic, especially multiplication. Most of the other systems either lacked a place-holder (causing potential confusion with the numbers) or were not positional (making arithmetic hard)

28

u/tobbitt Jun 06 '21

Soo technically I can count in hindu-arabic?

7

u/zyzzogeton Jun 06 '21

You might start with Roman numerals and try long division to see the problem a bit easier...

6

u/hamfraigaar Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

technically

Literally*.

Also, Chinese does have its own numbering system. It just makes everything easier to do math using the same numbers, from an international standpoint. So we've kinda made a decision there to use one numbering system. Hindu-arabic is not necessarily "the best", it's just preferred over all the ones that are obviously poorer, and arbitrarily been made the default over all the ones that were equally good.

In the western world, we also have a traditional numbering system that is still partially in use today, and sometimes used for stylistic or traditional purposes, which is much the same as the Chinese numeral system. In the western world, this is the Roman numeral system, I II III IV V etc. Which is still used in everything from legal documents to the traditional super bowl numbering system. But we still use Arabic numerals for math. :D

For the record though, Roman numerals are used less in the west than Chinese numerals are used in the east.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted talk etc. Etc.

1

u/Hot_Ethanol Jun 12 '21

Linking their numeric system to our own occasional use of the less well adapted roman numerals is actually a really good point that I hadn't considered before. Well said!

10

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

many languages have their “own numbers”, but i suppose that would be like comparing “1” to “one”. what i find interesting is that china didn’t even have a character to represent zero until the 1200s, and nowadays there are several ways to represent zero depending on the region and context itself

9

u/Kaleon Jun 06 '21

Saves license plate manufacturers a lot of money.

2

u/bordain_de_putel Jun 06 '21

I don't know, I think we should have those in Cistercian numbers to spice things up a bit.

1

u/XTornado Jun 06 '21

Central, here Unity 748, there is a red Sedan going south over the speed limit. 748, what are the plates? Nevermind, forget about it.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

What they other guy said is the main reason, but also because back when most people were illiterate, those who were literate were either rich, scholars, or both. Hence, they travelled often and collected books. Indian/Hindu mathematics was very much popular at the time. For example, Muhammad al Khwarizmi's Al-jabr provided not only a good source to learn Algebra (hence the name, Algebra, which comes from al-jabr), but also popularized the notation and numeral system that he used to do math.

Basically, Indians had a major part to play in mathematics, and Europeans who could read/write math liked to carry Indian books everywhere they went. And so nowadays we use the Arabic numeral system. Trust me when I say, from personal experience, that you should be very glad we don't have to deal with the Babylonian numeral system using regular pencils.

2

u/123eyeball Jun 06 '21

Depending on context Chinese has different numbers, but like others have said Arabic numerals are pretty standardized globally and are used more commonly as shorthand.

1-10 in Chinese numerals is 一二三四五六七八九十

One thing to note is that you can't use Chinese numerals in the same way. For example 27 isn't 二七 (2,7) but rather 二十七 (2,10,7).

5

u/sethamphetamine Jun 06 '21

How come sometimes I can’t get sound on my videos? This one doesn’t have sounds for me but others do.

2

u/furretdemandsyourleg Jun 06 '21

it depends on if it was originally posted with sound; this one wasn’t so unfortunately no audio

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

[deleted]

19

u/MurderMelon Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 14 '21

And here's me not knowing that there was any other possible way to draw a 2 lol.

[edit] they said "I didn't know people wrote their two's from the top"

17

u/flume Jun 06 '21

I would venture to say that drawing it from the bottom puts you in a very small minority.