Why It Matters: Historical Counting Systems
Why do historical counting systems still matter today?
When you check that balance in your bank account, or when you glance at the speedometer in your car, or even when you look for your child’s number on the back of jerseys during a pee wee football game, you are reading numerals in the Hindu-Arabic counting system. We are all familiar with those ten digits, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. What’s more, when we read a number like 352, we know that it stands for three groups of a hundred, five groups of ten, and two units. Our numerals are arranged according to a positional base 10 (or decimal) system… most of the time, anyway.![Digital clock displaying 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1141/2017/04/05221917/Digital_clock_display_235959.svg_-300x80.png)
![Babylonian cuneiform tablets from Internet Archive Book Images.](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/1141/2017/04/05222350/The_Babylonian_Expedition_of_the_University_of_Pennsylvania._Series_A-_Cuneiform_texts_1893_14595733948-220x300.jpg)