Why does the west use Arabic Numerals? (Short Animated Documentary)

Why does the western world, who are proudly descended from the Romans, use the Arabic Numeral system instead of the Roman one? You can find out why and when that change happened in this short and simple animated documentary.

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Sources:
Arithmetic with Roman Numerals by James Kennedy

MEDIEVAL TRADERS AS INTERNATIONAL CHANGE AGENTS: A COMPARISON WITH TWENTIETH CENTURY INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING FIRMS by Larry M. Parker

ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS AND RECORDING PROCEDURES IN THE EARLY ISLAMIC STATE by Omar Abdullah Zaid

THE INTRODUCTION OF "ARABIC" NUMERALS IN EUROPEAN ACCOUNTING by John W. Durham

[zeroshadow]

“And there’s your answer, hence why we got rid of them” - solid explanation haha

[LUKE-losh]

a roman walks into a bar, holds up 2 fingers and says "five beers please"

[alandolawson]

*“And there’s your answer, hence why we got rid of them”*
That, that right there is why I love this channel

[alabamaal]

Once the concept of including "Zero" as part of the Arabic numerals set became understood, the triumph of the system was assured.

[Cptmuch]

Seeing History Matters explain multiplication in Roman numerals gave me a stroke

[KnowingBetter]

I finally know how they did math with Roman numerals!

[nicorhodes]

Seeing multiplication done with Roman Numerals made me for the first time understand what true pain felt like.

[peacebewu]

In the Philippines, we were taught(iirc) that these were hindu-arabic instead of just "arabi numerals".

[CrunchyLlamaToes]

Today on: “ topic I never would’ve thought of but now that you mention it I’m interested”

[briangreen]

Imagine doing long division in Roman Numerals? The horror...

[DanielGalimidi]

This reminds of the meme where there's a poll that asks "Should schools in America be forced to teach Arabic numerals as part of their curriculum?" with 43% answering yes and 57% answering no.

[Hand-in-Shot_Productions]

I found this video to be quite informative! For instance, I never knew that Roman multiplication was so complicated! No wonder we adopted the much-shorter Hindu-Arabic numerals! Thanks for the information!

[yassineszn]

James bizonnette is history's matter sugar daddy

[nikolaivanov]

History matters: *uploads
The comments: James Bissonete

[afrikasmith]

Imagine having a calculator that only does Roman Numerals.

[bernardo]

I’m a history major and I learn more in this channel than in class. Congrats!

[Alkerae]

2:28 "13 x 13 in Roman Numerals...
...
Hence why we got rid of them."
MIND BLOWN,

Welcome to the comment section or:I love James Bissonete and I hope he would marry my daughter.

[NotOneOfUs]

"Hence why we got rid of them."
That was one of the shortest and best explanations for anything ever. Beats the hell out of school in my days.

[RealPeasantLord]

Fun fact, the only numbers you can have in the denominator of a fraction where the resulting decimal doesn’t repeat infinitely are any multiples of the prime factors of your number systems base. So for base 10, the only fractions that won’t infinitely repeat as decimals are 1/(2^x*5^y), since the prime factors of 10 are 2 and 5