Here are some notes on numbers. Read slowly and carefully.

Question: Why are Romans called Romans? Answer at the end.

The Romans wrote the first ten numbers as I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX,
and X.

Larger numbers had other rules. They used L for fifty, C for hundred, M for
thousand etc.

What is the crucial difference between how we write numbers and how the
Romans wrote them? When we write a number, 123, for example, this conveys
a lot of information. The 3 is in the “units” place, the 2 in the “tens” place, and
the 1 in the “hundreds” place. So 123 is 1 hundred, 2 tens, and 3. Any other
number we write, say 31415926, also follows the same rule: 6 units, 2 tens, 9
hundreds, 5 thousands, and so on.

The units, tens, hundreds, thousands etc. follow by starting from 1, and
multiplying by 10: 1, 10, 100, 1000, and so on. Therefore we call our number
system the Decimal system, since the Latin root “decas” denotes “a set of ten”.
Other examples in English: decade (10 years), decathlon (10 events), decimate
(a loss of a tenth, though now this word is also used more generally to denote a
huge loss).

In the decimal system, the individual digits convey information, called the
“place value”. The Roman system does not have a place value concept.

Let’s see why the place value system is greatly superior. For example, if you
want to add 23 and 45, then you write them one under the other, and add
according to the usual rules you have learned. So you add the 3 and the 5, to get
8, and the 2 and the 4 to get 6, and the answer is 68. If you add say 28 + 45, then
the 8+5 will give 13, which is 1 ten and 3 units, so you write the 3 in the units
place and carry the 1 and do 1+2+4 to give 7 tens, so the answer is 73.

You cannot do this in the Roman system. If you add IV + XII, then you have to
first do the addition according to common sense, and then write the answer as
XVI. So there are no easy rules for adding numbers.

Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician who travelled to parts of Asia in the

1200s and realized that many traders there were using the decimal system. He
came back to Europe and introduced the decimal system which led to vast
improvements in mathematics and science.
Just so you know, the ancient Egyptians were using yet another system, called
the sexagesimal system. In this system, just as we use a “base” of 10 to count
everything, they used a “base” of 60 to count everything. Don’t worry, you
don’t have to learn that for this course 😊

Let’s now turn to the words we use to refer to numbers. One, two, three, four,
five etc. First, some quick puzzles.

If you started writing the names of the numbers, starting from 1, what is the first
number in whose spelling the letter “a” appears for the first time? It doesn’t
appear in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,… In the spelling of which
number does “a” appear for the first time? Note that we do not count “and” as
part of the word name: 123 is “one hundred twenty three”, though when
speaking or writing we informally say “one hundred and twenty three”.

How about “b”?

How about “c”?

“D” is easy: hundred.

Answers at the end.

Once we hit big numbers, the names get tricky. In the USA, a million is 1
followed by 6 zeroes: 1,000,000. Then the zeroes go up by 3, since we always
multiply by 1000 to get the next number. A billion is a thousand million, so
1,000x1,000,000 = 1,000,000,000. A trillion has 12 zeroes. Then comes
quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion. How
to go further is explained here:

[Link]

Fun stories relating to big numbers:

[Link]

[Link]

Let’s now classify numbers.

First we have the natural numbers/counting numbers/whole numbers. These are

our familiar numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, …
The three dots “…” are called an “ellipsis” and denote that these numbers keep
on going for ever.

Next we have the integers. An “integer” is either a positive or negative whole

number. This is also an infinite list, but infinite in both directions. We normally
write it as: …, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, …

Next we have rational numbers. These are fractions, such as1/2, 5/6, -28/67 etc.
The top number is called the numerator, and the bottom one the denominator.
When you write a negative fraction, the negative sign “-“ is usually written next
to the dividing line on the left. Any integer is also a rational number, since you
can just put 1 under the integer so it looks like a fraction.

A fraction like 1/2 or 3/4 can be expressed as a decimal: 0.5 and 0.75
respectively, using long division. In these two examples, the decimal expansion
ends, or terminates. For 1/3, if you do the long division, then you get 0.333..., a
never ending sequence of 3s, so the decimal expansion does not end. If you do
1/7 (do the long division now), you'll see that the answer is
0.142857142857142857...where the block 142857 continues to repeat
indefinitely.

But we can show more generally that with *any* fraction, one of the two things
above must happen when we do the long division: either it terminates, or a
single digit (like the 3) or a block of digits (like the 142857) will start repeating
indefinitely. This is because of the following logic.

If you divide any whole number m by another whole number n, there are only a
finite number of possible remainders; in fact, exactly n number of remainders
are possible. For example, if you divide any whole number by 5, the 5 possible
remainders are 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4; the number 5 cannot be a remainder. Similarly
if you divide a number by 8, there are only 8 possible remainders, starting from
0 going on up to 7, and similarly for any number.

So now take any fraction, say 7/19 (or even 909/9092021 if you are feeling
bold). If you start the long division process, every step generates a remainder.
But there are only 19 possible remainders, and so one cannot keep on generating
a new remainder at every step, and one of the remainders will occur again, at
which point the corresponding block of digits in the decimal expansion will start
to repeat. If you divide by 9092021, there are only 9092021 possible
remainders, so you may have to wait a long time before you start to see a
repeating pattern, but it will happen at some point, and starting at that point,
whatever block you have already come up with will start to repeat, just like for
1/7 for example.
Now let's go the other way, and start with an interesting decimal expansion
which neither terminates, nor has a single digit or block of digits that repeat.
Say 0.121221222122221...where the pattern of generation is to write a 1, then
one 2, then a 1, then two 2s, then a 1, then 3 twos,...and so on. It is a fun
exercise to reason the other way and show that such decimal expansions, which
don't either terminate or have blocks of repeating digits, cannot be expressed as
fractions. If you can prove this using just basic logic/reasoning, send me an
email with your reasoning.

Fractions are called rational numbers, as we stated above. Numbers that are not
fractions (and therefore cannot be expressed as decimal expansions which either
terminate or have repeating blocks of digits in them) are called irrational
numbers. The square root of 2, a number “a” such that a x a = 2, is perhaps the
earliest known example of an irrational number. This discovery is generally
attributed to Hippasus of Metapontum who lived some point in the dim and
distant 6th century BC. He belonged to the school of Pythagoras, whom you
have heard of, in connection with the result a2 + b2 = c2 for right-angled
triangles. Alas, for this discovery, Hippasus was allegedly drowned at sea by
fellow Pythagoreans who held the belief that everything in the Universe could
be expressed via fractions. It is not that hard to show why 2 is irrational, and
maybe I’ll post a proof of that at some point later on in the semester.

pi is a famous irrational number. Its decimal expansion continues for ever

without any pattern. I usually use 3.1415926 for pi, but that’s only an
approximation, not the actual value of pi. The actual value of pi cannot be ever
known since it’s an infinite decimal expansion, so you won’t have enough time
in this life to write it out fully. Maybe in the afterlife.

What is the definition of pi? Pi is traditionally defined as the ratio of two

lengths. Take any circle, measure its circumference, and divide the answer by
the length of its diameter. No matter what sized circle you take, the answer will
always be the number pi. Of course, perfect circles and perfect
scales/rulers/tapes don’t exist, so we cannot ever be totally accurate if we were
to actually draw a circle and try the measurement, but there are mathematical
ways to measure the value of pi. If, after treading this, you are excited to go on
to study mathematics in more depth, and take a calculus class at some point, you
will learn how to calculate pi and generate more and more digits in the decimal
expansion of pi.

In ancient times people tried to actually draw very precise circles and measure
the circumference and diameter very precisely and divide the numbers. Indian
mathematicians in the 6th century BC got pi down to 3.139. Archimedes in the
3rd century BC showed that pi is in between 223/71 and 22/7, improving the
accuracy to 4 decimal places. Liu Hui in the 3rd century CE got 6 digits. And
I'll make a slight jump over eons here and say that in March of last year Emma
Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated pi to, you guessed it, 31.4 trillion digits.

Here is a fun story relating to pi:

[Link]

There are many memorization contests held for memorizing greater and greater
number of digits in the decimal expansion of pi. The current unofficial (don't
know why its unofficial) record is held by the retired Japanese engineer Akira
Haraguchi, who memorized it to, you guessed it, 120,000 digits.

So we saw natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, and irrational numbers.

This entire collection of numbers is called “real numbers”.

There is another important class of numbers called imaginary numbers or

complex numbers. But that is a more advanced topic, so we cannot discuss that
here. Maybe one day.

Answer to Romans question: Because they never stayed in one place. (Roam-
ans)

Answer to names of numbers question: “a”: Thousand. “b”: Billion. “c”:

Octillion.