Sunday, May 22, 2005

Roman Numbers

Here's something I learned from my son the other day. He and a friend from school were writing down Roman number equivalents for various numeric values and got stuck when they tried a really large number. It turns out that Roman numbers only go as high as 3999 (MMMCMXCIX). Above 3999, new symbols are used. A V with a line drawn above it represented 5,000. Likewise, X, L, C, D, M represented 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 500,000 and 1,000,000 respectively.
posted by Bob at 5/22/2005 08:30:00 PM  | | digg | del.icio.us | reddit