Every kid ever "when will roman numerals ever be useful in life ! "
In the 1500s, the English began realizing that Arabic numbers, with place values and a zero symbol, are better for calculating than other methods. (Try adding up hundreds of fleeces and sacks of wool with Roman numerals.) But old habits persist. Otis goes into 16th-century account books and finds Roman notation for fixed quantities on the same pages with Arabic marks used for summing. The English used Roman numerals, tally sticks, and counting discs long after priests took up Arabic numerals to indicate the number of years since Christ was born.
People needed to learn the new “arithmetick.” But universities were busy teaching ancient Greek. Textbooks, paper, and even literacy were rare. From 1500 to 1700, however, math books and “cyphering schooles” multiplied. Lessons dropped Roman numerals and took up compound interest and decimal fractions. “Arithmetic” became synonymous with Arabic numbers.
Part of the change, explains the author, involved a retreat of religious fatalism. Once probability calculations started showing that gambling outcomes were not random, clergymen argued about whether God was still in charge. “Yes, but…” was the answer. At the same time, people got over the idea that national censuses were like King David’s sinful “numbering of the people” in the Bible. The English were already used to local parish registers. The stage was set for demography and population-data analysis.
Arabic numerals were so embedded in the commercial system by 1700 that it “would go near to ruine the Trade of the Nation” if merchants had to revert to Roman numerals, tally sticks, and other older systems, Otis quotes a Scottish physician and mathematician as saying. Like all good historians, though, she cautions readers against modernity bias, in this case assuming that Arabic notation seemed any more familiar to most early-modern Europeans than, say, Norse runes look to people today.
I’ll allow it. It’s been centuries since Roman numerals have been out of favor.
I also see that the Games Rating Board is having about all the impact that I would expect on separating children from video game series:
https://gamesratingauthority.org.uk/RatingBoard/games
Grand Theft Auto V
This game has received a PEGI 18 which restricts availability to ADULTS ONLY and is not suitable for persons under 18 years of age. This rating has been given because it features violence against vulnerable and defenceless characters, motiveless killing of innocent characters, graphic violence, encouragement of gambling and use of strong language.
I hope he was only familiar with the meme and not the game itself…



