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?
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There’s more than one set of numbers. But most math going back to medieval times is based on work from Arabian scholars who invented some important things like algebra. So instead of trying to translate this work into different number sets, people who could do math just started using Arabic numerals.
Older systems like Roman numerals and Abjad numerals still exist but are usually only used for lists and fancy clocks, not normal counting.
Confusingly, in Arabia they tend to use Eastern Arabic numerals which are not the same as the (Western) Arabic numerals we use. Same base 10 counting system, but entirely different symbols. 5 looks like 0, 0 looks like a dot, etc.
Other counting systems like the Indic system in South Asia are primarily the same as western Arabian numerals but at high numbers have different groups – e.g a hundred thousand (100,000) is 1 lakh (1,00,000) in Indic numerals.
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