What base are Roman Numerals considered to use? Is it just base one, since all it is is a complicated system of tally marks? I don’t see how it could be base ten, or any other base. On the other hand, it does have distinct symbols that are not constructed by putting each other together. Or does it, for some reason, not fall into the category of number systems that are considered to have bases at all?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
A “modified base 10 system”, according to Dr. Math
Roman Numerals, computationally, are base ten.
Saying any non-place-value numeral system has a ‘base’ is stretching the concept way too far. If you can’t take a logarithm to that base, what’s the point?
You all mean base X.
Base is the number of unique digits a number system has
The important phrase there is positional number system. Which Roman isn’t.
Bingo. As Derleth and QED say, positional systems (just one very particular possible way to write down numbers) can be classified by their “base”; apart from those, the concept doesn’t really apply [at least, no convention for applying the concept in this extended setting has been set, nor need one be devised]. Glossing over irrelevant details, there’s precisely one system of base 10, one system of base 9, one system of base 67, etc., and Roman numerals aren’t equivalent to any of those. They’re their own thing.
Asking what base Roman numerals have is like asking whether pigeons are upper-case or lower-case; the concept doesn’t apply.
All yovr base are belong to vs.
My granddad used to explain to me that a zero, the mark zero, has zero corners. A one, drawn as a simple hook, has one corner.
A 2, shaped like a z, has two corners.
A 3, if you draw it in a Greekish way, three corners.
A four, drawn like cross, has four corners, but if quickly printed in a conjoined writing style, two corners get connected, hence the “top triangle”.
A five is a three with two additional hooks.
For the six, start counting inner and outer corners.
For the seven, you’ll need the horizontal crossbar (yields 4 corners) plus some addittoinal hooks. Or perhaps the seven used to be a T with a horizontal bar, and one extra “hook”.
a proper eight, two stacked squares, again has eight corners.
The nine can’t be really explained well.
The ten and up, the Radix system.
ETA, Oh, you meant Roman numerals. Well, I got nothing, this is about arabic numerals. Still, nice factoid.
And entirely fictitious.
It can be explained about as well as the rest, given how much of an ahistorical stretch that all was.
Perhaps enjoyably silly, but don’t put any actual stock into it. But then, I think most things described as “factoids” are like that…
fvckin hell. :smack:
This is a cute game to play with numeral glyphs, but I just want to make sure it’s understood that it has absolutely nothing to do with the way that the forms of decimal place-value numerals were historically devised or developed.
Moreover, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the (now thoroughly answered) question of whether roman numerals have a base.
Off-topic: Hunh. I didn’t realize it, but apparently the word “factoid” was originally coined specifically to mean “something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact”; i.e., “factoids” were, by definition, largely untrue. Not that this is the only way the term is used now [I think it’s often used to mean “true, but obscure or unimportant, piece of trivia”], but I found that interesting.
I first heard the term in the The Big Book Of Urban Legends IIRC. At that time (early '90s) it meant something masquerading as a fact. Now, as you say, it seems to more commonly mean a trivial fact.
Yes, I meant factoid as “might be true or sounds true, but isn’t necessarily”.
I never checked if it was true, though. Still, I’m somewhat disappointed in my granddad. Although that won’t stop me from telling my own son the same story. It’s a good story. 
Does anyone have a cite as to why that theory isn’t factual truth?
The Wiki article on Arabic numerals is a good place to start.
“All your base are belong to us.” - Julius Caesar
Although that Wiki article attributes the modern usage to CNN, I always understood that it started with USA Today and the colorful and stylized graphs of odd, unusual, or trivial facts that became their shorthand identity (and putdown) by the staider press even though today every outlet copies them. They were always referred to as factoids, even though USA Today called them snapshots.