How high can you count on your fingers? (Spoiler: much higher than 10) - James Tanton
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How high can you count on your fingers? It seems like a question with an obvious answer. After all, most of us have ten fingers -- or to be more precise, eight fingers and two thumbs. This gives us a total of ten digits on our two hands, which we use to count to ten. But is that really as high as we can go? James Tanton investigates.
Although the placement of symbols now has some significance, this version of the Roman numeral system is still not a system using place-value as we know it today. To illustrate how difficult computation is without the convenience of proper place-value, determine XCVI + IX + CDIX + CCXXIV (using only Roman numerals in your scratch work)
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Meet The Creators
- Educator James Tanton
- Director Lisa LaBracio
- Script Editor Alex Gendler
- Sound Designer Weston Fonger
- Animator Kaitlyn Carroll
- Narrator Addison Anderson
