by Jessica Golmon
The Egyptians used a grouping system for numbering called "hieroglyphics." They had symbols for one, ten, hundred, thousand, hundred thousand, and million. Each symbol was used repeatedly to build or group the numbers. This is called "a grouping system."
The Egyptians did not use place valued. They often wrote their numbers on papyrus, wood, and pottery. The ancient Egyptians were possible the first civil station to practice the scientific arts. The Egyptians really excelled in medicine and applied mathematics. Literature describing their achievements in medicine, their is no records of how they reached their mathematical conclusions. They must have had advanced understanding of the subject because their exploits in engineering, astronomy, and administration would not have been possible.
The Egyptians had a decimal system using seven different symbols.
1 is shown by a single stroke
10 is shown by a drawling of a hobble of cattle
100 is represented by a coil of rope
1000 is a drawling of a lotus plant
10,000 is represented with a finger
100,000 by a tadpole frog
1,000,000 is the finger of a god with arm raised above his head
The conventions for reading and writing numbers is quite simple; the higher number is always written in front of the lower number and when there is more that one row of numbers the reader should start at the top.
Babylonian
Mathematics
Like Egyptians the Babylonians used a simple "grouping system" based on "tens" but they had "subtraction" symbols. Some of their numbers were a result of adding symbols and others were a result of subtracting them. For example "12" was
grouped as "10+2" while "38" was "40-2."
The Babylonian used place value. They used a triangle-shaped stylus to write their symbols. They wrote their math on tablets of clay, they then placed the tablets in an oven to bake and harden.
sources:
.interlochen.k12.mi.us/math/egyptianmath/sarahhistory.html
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistoryTopics.html
www-groups.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/History-overview.html
www.xs4all.nl/~swanson/origins/maths-dk/.html