How come there are several widely used alphabets in the world (Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese etc) but only one set of numbers (Arabic) most of the world uses?

Question

While Latin Alphabet is dominant, Chinese and Arabic letters are widely used as well, along with several others. But most everyone in the world uses Arabic numerals, even though there are others. Why is that?

In: Other

Answer 1

Arabic numerals refer to the idea of position being important. 313 is three hundreds, 1 ten, and 3 ones. It’s much simpler to do math with Arabic numerals than roman numerals where the equivalent is CCCXIII.

0123456789 are the latin/western characters used to write those numbers. There are other characters used in other writing styles, ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ for example in Arabic.