Therese Raquin Essay Example for Free

Therese Raquin Essay Therese Raquin 39 jelenamlt Simple Mayan mathematics The Mayans had a very sophisticated number system. The System was used and developed mainly for astrological purposes. It was a base 20 System, believed to be derived from ancient peoples counting on both their fingers and their toes, called the vigesimal systerry Today we use a base 10 system, the decimal system, meaning each place value Is equal to a power of 10, and in the vigesimal system each place value s equal to a power of 20. They also used separate numerals consisting of lines, dots, nd shells. So for example 26 is written with one dot in the venties place and one bar and one dot (6) in the ones place. Once comfortable with this concept Mayan addition and subtraction are easy. If you wanted to add 83 and 59 in Mayan numerals it would look something like this: A more complicated problem such as 478 9534 would look like this: Subtraction is done the exact same way as addition. Multiplication however. was done differently. It consisted of drawing lines that correspond to the number the counting up the number of crossings in each corner. It was very simple and easy to do. Say you were multiplying 12 and 11 you would draw ne line for the tens place in the 12 and two for the ones place in the 12 and then one line for the tens place of the II and one for the ones place. Count the number Of Crossing in the left corner and the number Of crossing in the right corner. Then add up the number Of Crossings in the bottom corner and the number Of crossings in the top corner and then from left to right (number Of left corner crossings, number you get when adding top and bottom corner crossings and the number Of right corner crossings) and this Will be your answer.