[Go to site: main page, start]
|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

Most beautiful equation

Most beautiful equation

Posted Oct 29, 2015 7:04 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
In reply to: Most beautiful equation by brugolsky
Parent article: What's new in TeX, part 2

Should I assume you like this form better because it includes 0 (zero)?

Zero was such an abstract concept that the Romans didn't have a clue. (How do I write 0 in Roman numerals?)

Thanks to 9th Century India (by way of Persia and Arabia) did 0 find its way to Europe. (Source: Wikipedia [which also states the profound importance of 0 in mathematics].)

to post comments

Most beautiful equation

Posted Oct 29, 2015 9:50 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Off-topic, maybe, but it's amusing to note that Europeans were using abacuses -- which implicitly use place notation, and zero -- for centuries before they began transcribing the results that way.

Most beautiful equation

Posted Oct 29, 2015 11:02 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

You are confusing zero the digit with zero the number. Zero the number was know by ancient Egyptians, alongside negative numbers. I do not know why people are relating invention of positional notation with the invention of the zero, since before positional notations there were no true digits, only numbers.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29#Egypt


Copyright © 2026, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds