The Roman numeral notation offered another innovation as well. Normally, the symbols in a Roman numeral expression are sorted or arranged in descending order. But, there is an important exception. The position or location of some symbols conveyed a special meaning. The Roman numeral notation lacks the capability of representing 0, negative numbers, and fractions.
Arithmetic operations are still tedious.
The idea of reserving a special meaning for the order and location of symbols in a notation is important. If we extend it to every symbol, we can eliminate most of the problems associated with nonpositional notations. The decimal system is a prime example of a positional notation. Each symbol or digit is a coefficient of a product of a power of 10. Each succeeding digit in the sequence decreases in significance.