How do Roman Numerals Work?

Question

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In: Mathematics

Answer 1

It’s just a different symbolic representation of numbers. It “works” in the sense that you can scratch some symbols into the dirt or write them on paper and another person who understands the system will understand the quantity/number you’ve written.

There’s nothing special about the (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) base 10 system we use. We could just as easily count with fewer symbols. Computers count with only two (0,1). Roman numerals use a different paradigm of counting, is all.

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, and so-on. Arabic numerals (0-9) are thought to be easier to work with for a bunch of reasons, but again, using roman numerals is just a *different encoding scheme for the same kind of information*.