602 in babylonian numerals how to#

The two systems do it differently, partly because their system lacked a zero. The Babylonian system uses base-60, meaning that instead of being decimal, it's sexagesimal.īoth the Babylonian number system and ours rely on position to give value.

In 'Homage to Babylonia', writer-teacher Nick Mackinnon says he uses Babylonian mathematics to teach 13-year-olds about bases other than 10. Still, having to learn Base 60 is intimidating. Base 60 also has various useful factors in it that make it easy to calculate with. They were accomplished astronomers and so the number could have come from their observations of the heavens. In part they used Base 60, the same number we see all around us in minutes, seconds, and degrees of a triangle or circle. The Babylonians used this Base 10, but only in part. We actually have 20, but let's assume we're wearing sandals with protective toe coverings to keep off the sand in the desert, hot from the same sun that would bake the clay tablets and preserve them for us to find millennia later. We use a Base 10, a concept that seems obvious since we have 10 digits. The next step throws a wrench into the simplicity department. Whether this is harder or easier to learn to handle than a pencil is a toss-up, but so far they're ahead in the ease department, with only two basic symbols to learn. What they wrote with was a tool one would use in sculpture, since the medium was clay. They didn't have our pens and pencils, or paper for that matter. That's basically all the ancient people of Mesopotamia had to do, although they varied them here and there, elongating, turning, etc. Imagine how much easier it would be to learn arithmetic in the early years if all you had to do was learn to write a line like I and a triangle. Three Main Areas of Difference From Our Numbers Number of Symbols Used in Babylonian Math

602 in babylonian numerals how to#

With this table of squares you can see how to put Base 60 put into practice. Here is an example of Babylonian mathematics, written in cuneiform.