Imagine having kids in Seattle

[RblDiver]

Ever thunk why we read the Roman alphabet we use left to right, but numbers seem to go right to left?

Eh, kinda. I mean, it expands to the left as things get more significant, but we still read it left to right. You'd read the number 1234 as one-thousand two-hundred thirty-four, not four-thirty-two hundred and one thousand, nor four thousand three hundred twenty one :P

[BladesNBarrels]

Eh, kinda. I mean, it expands to the left as things get more significant, but we still read it left to right. You'd read the number 1234 as one-thousand two-hundred thirty-four, not four-thirty-two hundred and one thousand, nor four thousand three hundred twenty one :P

The Roman abacus, shown here in reconstruction, dates to the 1st century AD. It has eight long grooves containing up to five beads in each and eight shorter grooves having either one or no beads in each. The groove marked I indicates units, X tens, and so on up to millions. The beads in the shorter grooves denote fives or five units, five tens etc., essentially in a bi-quinary coded decimal system, related to the Roman numerals. The short grooves on the right may have been used for marking Roman "ounces" (i.e. fractions).

There we go! Simple as Pi (oops, that's Greek to me)