Talk:0/Archive 1

message: I don't want to step on the toes of the learned Wikipedians working on WikiProject Numbers, but I want to bring to their attention a little tidbit on the number zero: while the ordinal zeroeth is rarely used, there is one instance of it in classical music. The composer Anton Bruckner regarded his early Symphony in D minor to be unworthy of including in the canon of his works, and he wrote 'gilt nicht' on the score and a circle with a crossbar, intending it to mean "invalid". But posthumously, this work came about to be known as Symphony No. 0 in D minor, even though it was actually written after Symphony No. 1 in C minor. There's an even earlier Symphony in F minor of Bruckner's that is sometimes called No. 00. Del arte 21:56, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Very interesting.  I've added this to zeroth.  4pq1injbok 03:52, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Zeroeth Symphony 

message: In paper writing one may not distinguish the 0 and O at all, or may add a slash across it in order to show the difference, although this sometimes causes ambiguity in regard to the symbol for the Null Set.
"Null Set" should either be Null set (no capital S for "set") or empty set. I think it should be empty set, considering the information on notation on that page, and the absence of any information on null set. Brianjd
:Someone changed the article to say that letter O is more rectangular than digit 0. In the default font used by wikipedia this is not true on my screen. For me digit 0 has straights on four sides and rounded corners, while capital O is more oval shaped. How about your screens? −Woodstone 18:11, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
::The only place I can recall seeing "more rectangular" letter Os is on license plates. It seems we have several ways that have been used to distinguish the characters, including "ovalness" (elliptical eccentricity?) "squareness" and slashing. I've also seen fonts where the zero has a dot in the middle. --Yath 23:30, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinguishing zero from O 

message: 0 (number), 0 (disambiguation), and Zero (disambiguation) need to be cleaned up.  I'm moving everything to the number, and not the spelled-out english title; and moving dab content to its own page away from the number/numeral article.  +sj + 20:25, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanin gup, merging 

message: It appears that computers consider zero to be positive. This is because the most common representation of numbers is the 2-complement, so a negative number always starts with the bit 1. Since zero starts with a bit 0 it is considered a posistive number.
:No, this is not true.  In two's complement, a "0" sign bit only indicates that the number is not negative.  (With floating-point numbers (namely IEEE 754), there is both a positive and negative zero.) --Doradus 13:35, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
::Some computers have both negative and positive zero.  See one's complement.  --A D Monroe III 20:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most CPUs have a special "all zero" attached, which makes the point of whether or not it is even moot.  It's more important in computer science that it is a cruial asymmetry to the ABS()_function (other lesser repercussions are not as interesting.  Early Java gave us a Math.abs() function, but since the range of say a byte is -128 to 127, the implementation has no good choice when presented with Math.abs( (byte)(-128) ).  If one anticipates this issue, brava...  but there are a half-dozen primitives to remember that this is an issue.
I have a serious grievance with the statement that zero "may or may not be" a natural number, particularly the smug assertion that if you think zero is not a natural number you are not a mathematician.  
Repent for your tone when you couple it with falsifiable content. 
I read the guidelines, but this ignorance must be eradicated like rats or pigeons; it's mathematical vermin.
Investigate the issue on Wolfram's site, and read 4 books written before the 70s on the topic.
Wolfram will set you straight.
The Natural Numbers are a non-terminating series that begin at 1 (ONE) and whose next elementa is 1 greater than the previous.   In the domain of natural numbers, division by zero is ungrammatical because THERE IS NO ZERO, THERE IS NOT EVEN NULL, only no remainder during division.  It is NOY a valid Natural Number--that's why there's blanks and out-of-band .  
The Romans did many great things, but they did nothing with the advances of the Greeks, consequently Merriam-Webster shows--from day one--a blank space in the Roman Numeral table.  It's clear from the history that educated people of that time were limited to a single word, which to most meant Nothing/Void/Out Of Bane in a universal sense rather than a value that causes exceptional attention to the changes in the governing rules.
Then our Indian friends push through, give it a glyph--once that is accepted, mathematics is free from empiricism--and the rules governing the operators change due to DbZ.  As one moves from one mathematical "calculs" to the next
Wolfram's approach to 
Integers follow in the western world, but they're for bookish accountsl.0
Then we get integers, with negative numbers, but in software the problem/proficiency the register constrictions in and bytes and range/ , but I coden to 
Similar complications arise 
S be t,Read a goddamn book.  The history of mathmetatics is p
This issue then infects all numeriimitive  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KlangenFarben (talk • contribs) 07:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  computers consider zero to be positive 

message: ...Is there any issue over whether or not zero is considered a number, at least, in the same way one and two would be? I was always wondering this. >.> -- A Link to the Past 09:02, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
: In the past, zero was not considered a number - the article discusses the development of the concept at some length.  However, it has been considered a true number for a long time, longer than  negative or imaginary numbers.  Zack 22:29, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just curious... 

message: I'm sorry, but when and where was zero called "aught"? Surely, this should read "naught or nought", while "aught" is the precise opposite of zero, meaning "something"? 83.78.191.122 13:23, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: aught??

message: I have removed this paragraph from the history section.  
: The zero was invented by inhabitants of India around the sixth century CE. The earliest zero on record, an inscription of Zero on Sankheda Copper Plate was found in Gujarat, India (585-586 CE). In Brahma-Phuta-Siddhanta of Brahmagupta (7th century CE), the zero is lucidly explained and was rendered into Arabic books around 770 CE. From these it was carried to Europe in the 8th century. However, the concept of zero is referred to as Shunya in the early Sanskrit texts of the 4th century BCE and clearly explained in Pingala’s Sutra of the 2nd century.
The part about Brahmagupta is redundant with existing discussion under "First use of the number", and the other part (the Sankheda copper plate, Pingala's Sutra, etc.) is unsourced.  This text seems to have been lifted almost verbatim from a Hindu evangelical website which I do not find credible; all Google hits are either also copied from that site, or are Wikipedia mirrors.  I'd be happy to see mention of the copper plate and Pingala's Sutra return to the article if accompanied by a credible source citation.  It should also be corrected so as not to contradict the discussion of Mayan and Babylonian mathematics.
Zack 17:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another paragraph removed from the history section 

message: I've added to this section to make clear that zero was in common use from the thirteenth century for calculation.  Also, mentioned the modern myth about the church banning zero as this comes up from time to time. --James Hannam 17:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero in the Middle Ages 

message: In Fred Schuh's book, The Master Book of Mathematical Recreations, §§251-254, is mentioned a step-pyramid type puzzle involving multiples of 7.
§254 references a stone apparently found in Saqqara and created by Imhotep (Fig. 122); I am not sure if a scan of the stone would be allowable here, but the gist of it is that this stone has glyphs that appear to be numbers - decimal numbers even, including the 0 in its modern digital sense. It doesn't appear that these glyphs make any sort of sense except as being taken as numbers, either.
Has anyone else seen this stone? It's clear that it's significant in the history of the 0, but I have not been able to find any other references to Dr. Kirederf (despite him being supposedly "the well known Egyptologist" according to Mr Schuh), Eugaheht, the Saqqara stone or similar other than the book itself - I am not sure if this tale is true or apocryphal.
Amarande 23:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stone in Saqqara pyramid? 

message: I've included Russell's famous definition of zero to supplement the current explanation ("For example, if the number of one's brothers is zero, then that person has no brothers. If the difference between the number of pieces in two piles is zero, it means the two piles have an equal number of pieces.") Not only does the logical definition introduce rigour but the original definition is circular. Mikkerpikker 15:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Logical definition

message: I've removed the following sentence, which is at best highly misleading, from the article:
*In nonstandard analysis the number zero is taken as an infinitesimal element of a non-principal ultrafilter.
In any hyperreal field, zero is smaller in absolute value than any positive number, and so is trivially an infinitesimal. However, normally by an infinitesimal, we explicitly mean to exclude zero. For instance if dx and dy are infinitestimals, we can take the ratio dx/dy only if dy is not zero.
Gene Ward Smith 01:13, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nonstandard analysis

message: Does anyone agree with me that the following additions are infinitely extendable and have no relevance to the article?
* In trigonometry, sin 0 = 0, tan 0 = 0, arcsin 0 = 0, and arctan 0 = 0. 
* Zero is one of three possible return values of the Möbius function. Passed an integer x2 or x2y, the Möbius function returns zero. 
* Zero is the first Perrin number. 
−Woodstone 22:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The first and third seem silly, so I'll delete them. The Möbius function bit isn't so bad, since it has a bit of content, but if someone deletes it too, I'll still sleep at night. Melchoir 03:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you know the Perrin sequence? 3, 0, 2, 3, 2, 5, 5, 7, 10, 12, 17, 22, 29, 39... Anton Mravcek 16:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So what? There are an infinity of sequences (and functions) that have a zero somewhere. The fact that 0 is in the sequence may say something about the sequence, but does not tell us anything about zero. The line does not belong in this article. −Woodstone 17:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. The OEIS suggests about 80000 known candidates. Melchoir 18:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant additions  

message: Ok, a bit off topic, remove this if it is in the way. Just wanted to mention that the zero fell off my keyboard and when I phoned Dell to have it fixed, the guy who answered did not know what a zero was, I used the article 0 (number) to explain. I don't think English was his first language. Once he realized what I meant said Ohhh, that is what a zero is, I know that number. HighInBC 23:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dell and zero 

message: These references need a bit more research (and don't seem relevant if they are similar to Morse code, a ternary system)?   The Pingala article also seems quite clear that this has little to do with zero, so perhaps we should clean this up?  mfc 15:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you mean by "clean this up". Even if this means deleting it, I have no basic objection except to note that it will probably be added again by an Indian proponent. I have another objection to the following sentence, that he used sunya, void, to mean zero. That is not noteworthy because as far as I know, all languages have a word for nothing, and it is obvious to me that when applied to anything that is normally counted, like sheep or goats, can be translated as zero. In my opinion, the concept of zero has always been known, only a special symbol for it was a late arrival. — Joe Kress 22:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The way I undertood it was that Sunya-which translated to void-was the name given for that symbol in Indian math, where its role as a placeholder was first developed. But that's just what I think.
--Sakredfire 07:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pingala, etc. 

message: Perhaps this could be expanded upon, is zero singular or plural, e.g., there are zero comments but not *there is zero comment.    Why is that?  CoolGuy 03:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammar of zero 

message: This article is getting a bit long (36 KB), and it deals with both the number zero (the abstract concept of nothing, which is so useful in math) and the numeral/digit 0 (a little symbol that looks like an ellipse and should not be confused with O, although it's often pronounced "oh"). The two topics are mixed in together in a confusing way. It seems that there is enough material on the latter (typography, etc.) to split it off into its own article. Comments? Joshua Davis 00:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: split off 0 (numeral) or 0 (digit) 

message: I would propose to leave out the confusing "As a number zero means nothing — an absence of other values". Alhough 'adding the number zero' has the same effect as 'adding nothing', in principle we have to distinguish between the concept 'number zero' and the concept 'nothing'. That distinction is no meaningless distinction, because 'adding nothing' is, contrary to 'adding the number zero', the refraining from any action. It implies that the number zero is not identical with ‘nothing’ ('nothing' is only nothing, and so it cannot be a number at all). Although ‘zero apples’ boils down to ‘nothing’, the number zero does not. The so-called medieval zero is no real zero at all (see the discussion about wikipedic medieval zero (Talk:Number 28). Jan Z 15:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinguishing zero from nothing 

message: I notice some inconsistency in the spelling of the plural form of 'Zero'.  What is the correct spelling?
Both spellings are correct, but you are expected to choose one of both.  Here it's mixed as you noted.  I have not found the exact difference (like -se or -ze for verbs like realise, .. : people assume it's a UK/US difference, while it's a within-UK difference historically). --82.35.101.136 11:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zeroes or Zeros? 

message: I think the two history sections need to be combined. Also, there is some disagreement about whether Long Count examples were found outside the Maya homeland. Whether yes or no, we need a cite to back up whichever version of the story is presented. Cbdorsett 06:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The entries under History do not discuss zero used alone, as those under History of zero do, hence they must remain distinct in some manner, although I don't know what would be the appropriate sub-heading for the first sub-section. — Joe Kress 07:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of Zero 

message: I removed the translations, as they don't belong in here, maybe they should be in wiktionary.
A few additional examples follow.
* Arabic: Sifr
* Catalan: xifra, cypher, amount; desxifrar, to decode; zero, zero
* Czech/Slovak: cifra, digit; šifra, cypher
* Danish: ciffer, digit
* Dutch: cijfer, digit
* French: zéro, zero
* German: Ziffer, digit, figure, numeral, cypher
* Italian: cifra, digit, numeral, cypher; zero, zero
* Malay: sifar
* Norwegian: siffer, digit, numeral, cypher; null, zero
* Persian: Sefr
* Polish: cyfra, digit; szyfrować, to encrypt; zero, zero
* Portuguese: cifra, figure, numeral, cypher, code; zero, zero
* Russian: цифра (tsifra), digit, numeral; шифр (shifr) cypher, code
* Slovenian: cifra, digit
* Spanish: cifra, figure, numeral, cypher, code; cero, zero
* Swedish: siffra, numeral, sum, digit; chiffer, cypher
* Serbian: shifra, cypher, figure, numeral
* Turkish: Sıfır
* Urdu: Sifer, Zero
bogdan 13:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  digits and zero in various languages. 

message: :I cannot find a source that tells how many digits 0 has. I suppose people assume it has one because it is represented by one digit (0), but I have a few arguments that say it doesn't have one digit
*There are 9000 numbers with four digits, 900 with three, 90 with two, and ... 10 with 1
*The first number with four digtits over the first number with three is ten, three digits/two digits=10, two digits/one digits= ... infinity (or undefined)
*The logarithim of the first number with four digits is 3,three 2, two 1,one ... -infinity
:Does anyone have a definite answer, or an idea for an argument, on how many digits 0 has?
Indeed123 21:21, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many digits does 0 have? 

message: The in other fields article is rather trivial. Should we consider removing it?--Cronholm144 22:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In other fields? 

message: I'm not sure how to do it. Also, it is causing formatting issues.--0rrAvenger 15:41, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotations section should be moved to WikiQuote 

message: :The rules of Brahmagupta are very important, but I think they are in the wrong place. His ideas about zero should certainly stay, but the others I'm just going to move to the page on the book. If anyone disagrees, please move it back. Indeed123 15:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rules of Brahmagupta 

message: I have removed the sentence "It means "courageous one" in hieroglyphics." from the article pending some sort of contextual explanation. Speciate 20:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hieroglyphics? 

message: history is not chronological, it would be more understandable if it was.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.212.234.91 (talk) 23:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  history of zero 

message: I think there's something lacking in the "In computer science" section in the advantages of 0 indexing. One of them is indexing. Let's say you're on a very simple 8-bit architecture, and that you're trying to allocate/have access to an array containing 256 elements.
With 0 indexing, you can use indexes from 0x00 to 0xFF (255) to access all your array elements. But with 1 indexing, you would have to use indexes from 0x01 to 0x100 (256)! That takes an index with more than the necessary 8 bits. That's quite a problem, as these type of situations happen quite frequently, depending on the kind of programming you do. --62.147.133.191 (talk) 19:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are undoubtedly right. Do you happen to know a reliable source that mentions this issue, so that we can include this in a verifiable way in the article?  --Lambiam 21:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. But we can do it like we always do, add that to the article, and have a "citation needed" thing. Someone will eventually bother with finding a citation. --62.147.133.191 (talk) 07:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't need an extra byte to store an index for a 256-element array, regardless of the first index.  If it starts at 1, just store the index - 1. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 09:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  In computer science : the index size convenience point 

message: I think the history section needs to be started off with wordings which sound something like this. "The origin and history of zero can be traced back to the Hindu/Indian civilization." The article in its current form supports this statement. 
Why always a western bias in the scientific history and origin of everythingSrinivasanram1 (talk) 17:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Hindu/Indian zero was the first decimal zero. All instances before that were for non-decimal zeros—sexagesimal, vigesimal, Roman numeral, etc. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Indian zero was the first decimal non-blank zero.  Chinese have been strictly decimal from the beginning and they wrote arithmetic rules on zero and negative numbers in the 1st century CE, but their zero was a blank. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 14:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Eurocentric" was the word I was looking for.Srinivasanram1 (talk) 04:59, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, the earliest Long Count of any kind is that of 36 BCE (7.16.3.2.13), which did not use a zero. Indeed, none of the earliest Long Counts (36 BCE–162 CE) use zero according to Mesoamerican Long Count calendar#Origin of the Long Count calendar. When written in bar-dot form without glyphs the Long Count requires a zero to work. However, a Long Count written with glyphs that name the units (baktuns, katuns, etc.) does not need a zero, even though they were usually written with a glyph that meant zero when a the Long Count contained a zero. Thus the article must be reworded so that it does not support the misconception that the earliest Long Counts used a zero unit. Nevertheless, the earliest Long Counts that did use zero are still quite early. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indian Contribution 

message: The Spanish version of this aricle seems to have a different history of zero. Why the difference? Rmhermen (talk) 22:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Spanish version is really weird. According to its Google machine translation, zero originated in the "Belgian Congo, under the Empire Mweangh" possibly as early as 15 AD, but with an earliest certain agreed upon use in 327 AD. But according to early Congolese history, the earliest empire was the Kingdom of the Congo (1400-1914) whose leaders had the title Mwenekongo. This appears to be the source of the garbled Spanish phrase. Furthermore, Congolese oral tradition was not set to writing until the late 16th century. The translation then states that that zero came to Europe through Marroquis, which is Marrakesh, Morocco. This is reasonable for the Arabic version arriving in Europe via the Moors. It says the word zero comes from Swahili fejr (sifuri) via Arabic sikd (ṣifr) via Russian (tzifra) (usual English transliterations in parentheses). Thus the word arrived by a very circuitous route quite different from the concept. But the Swahili word actually came from Arabic, not vice versa. The Russian probably did come from Arabic (via Greek), but was not the source of any Western European form. Somehow the Almajesto (Almagest} was written in 204 AD by Titus Vespucio, instead of about 140 AD by Ptolemy. A possibility for Titus Vespucio is Vespasian, Roman emperor from 69 to 79, whose full name was Titus Flavius Vespasianus. I have no idea what to make of "In 343 AD Zsnewinya creates a number system that was not zero and it was a simple positional system." I can't identify Zsnewinya, and 343 is nowhere near any important date in mathematics of which I am aware. Within the same paragraph two sentences later, Indians are mentioned for the first and only time! — Joe Kress (talk) 06:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't take it seriously.  It's surely a vandalism by 190.51.158.88 .  It'll be reverted. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 09:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was more than a bit suspicious of the Belgian Congo bit. I reverted it - it is just a shame that the vandalism there got edited for links and grammar several times with no one noticing the content change. Of course, I have seen it happen in English as well. Now if I could only remember why I was trying to read the article in Spanish?? Rmhermen (talk) 17:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Spanish version

message: The article states that "all numbers" are divisors of zero, however, this is not strictly true as it can't be divided by itself as division by zero is undefined. Maybe this should be changed.RMFan1 (talk) 12:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Formally, 0 divides 0, as 0 × 0 = 0, even though 0 / 0 is undefined. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 13:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Divisors

message: As I have written above, the article of the versions 2008-02-25T07:20:35 through 2008-02-25T21:59:38 and the talk page of the 2008-02-26T05:55:57 version violate the copyright.  They should be deleted from the revision history. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:44, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Wikipedia:Copyright problems, we don't need to delete old versions that violate copyrights, and reverting the article is enough. - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright violation 

message: The article says "Zero is the first Perrin number." Is it really? Sure, it's P(1), but P(0) is 3. So it depends on whether you call P(0) the first (since there are none before it) or the zeroth. In any case I'm not sure whether this fact is interesting enough to put here. It seems to be just the ordinary whole number zero, so is it really an 'extended' use of zero? I had never heard of Perrin numbers before and I only skimmed the article, so I can't really judge.--Angelastic (talk) 15:07, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perrin numbers 

message: Invented in India? Sounds suss to me... Lady Raven. 12:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, INVENTED IN INDIA BY HINDUS! Also, so were the entire NUMERAL SYSTEM, DECIMAL SYSTEM, BINARY SYSTEM, PHILOSOPHY, LANGUAGE, RELIGION, LINGUISTICS etc.; ALL WERE INVENTED IN INDIA!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.39.64 (talk) 20:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Sounds 'suss'? I wonder how narrow minded some people could be. It also proves the level of their general knowledge.  S3000  ☎ 11:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: so if u would like like to wrote zero, like for example on ur e-mail addredd, you should write a zero with a slash across it? would a diagonal slash from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner wr wrong? thx
72.229.222.147 (talk) 18:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ZERO SYMBOL 

message: From my understanding the concept of zero has been concieved in many parts of the world, the earliest reference from the Dogon Tribe of Mali (west Africa).
They used a mark made from the thumb meaning "dead" or "from dead" in context it meant was "nothing".
The Dogons version of the zero was later adopted by various middle eastern countries, and this is when the thumb print was changed to the symbol we know today (0), this symbol is still representative of the thumb print, it was just easier to write.
The term "Dead on" (on point) also has relations with the "Dogon zero"
With all the knowledgeable minds out there, I am dissapionted that the Dogons don't even get a mention on the relavent Wikipedia page. 
Usually I find Wikipedia to be a reliable impartial source of information, but I find that "giving credit where credit is due", or more accurately, not giving credit to Sub-Saharan Africa for some of the development of human intelligence is common, and on many subjects.
This has inspired me to register with Wikipedia just write this.
Mankind is an intelligent creation, beyond time, beyond space, and historical text.
There have been intelligent minds in Africa from even before the dawn of civilisation (European standard), it's not such a far stretch to think that most mankinds inventions occured in the worlds oldest continent, then modified, improved upon, or even invented again by someone else, some place else (like the 12 volt batteries found in Egypt).  
The only reason why I am not updating the page myself is because I do not know the exact dates concerned, just that they are the earliest known.
Anyone reading this please do your own research and update the page before I do. Thankyou.
G.Logic Godlogic (talk) 16:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: On a related topic, the orginal belief that the Dogon knew of Sirius B has been refuted by a later researcher in Dogon#Dogon and Sirius. I have never heard of their knowledge of zero, nor is it mentioned in the Dogon article, nor are there any hits for it using Google. It sounds like fringe science which requires some mention in a reputable journal for inclusion here. Furthermore, the extraordinary claim that a Dogon thumbprint influenced the shape of the Indian/Western Arabic/European symbol for zero requires extraordinary proof, including proof that the Dogon were using that 'symbol' over 1500 years ago when the Indians adopted a circular symbol for zero and that some sort of trade existed between the Dogon and the Indians for that influence to be transmitted. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the concept of zero? 

message: Just noticed that "zeros" and "zeroes" are used interchangably throughout this article as the plural of zero. Either is correct, but one should be used consistantly. 217.36.223.10 (talk) 11:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you feel that strongly about it, edit it and correct it. Just make sure to explain your edit in the edit summary (e.g., "I changed as "zeros" to "zeroes" for consistency"). Anton Mravcek (talk) 22:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  zeros or zeroes? 

message: Non-programmers actually already count from 0 with realizing it. When counting, guess what people use as the first digit for tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.? Hint: it is not 1. So it is very inconsistent to use 1 as the first unit. This inconsistency is why years starting with 19... are the 20th century: we are just missing the 0th century.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.77.176.130 (talk) 09:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Numbering from 1 or 0?

message: The C99 standard defines a "null pointer constant" as an integer constant expression with the value zero (optionally cast to a void *) (6.3.2.3-3) and NULL as "an implementation-defined null pointer constant" (7.1.7-3) which means that in all cases, (NULL==0) is true.  As per 6.2.6.1-1, the internal representation of any non-integer type is undefined, not just the internal representation of pointers, so sating that "[a NULL pointer] has no particular association with zero" is incorrect since a NULL pointer when cast to an integer is zero and a zero cast to a pointer is the NULL pointer. --Real Deuce (talk) 22:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake.  A null pointer is equal to 0.  C89 doesn't specify it has the value 0, but it's probably close enough.  As most of the C compilers I work on claim to be implementations of C89 rather than of C99, I haven't studied the C99 specs.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 02:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps all true, but irrelevant since the article is not about C. −woodstone (talk) 05:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would tend to agree that the whole set of null sections should be removed since this is an article about zero, not null and is not zero (even though NULL==0 :-). ---Real Deuce (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: NULL pointers in C

message: The factorization section of the infobox looks horrible, because of course 0 isn't really factorisable. Is there a way to make the infobox look better? —Goodtimber (walk/talk) 01:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factorization in infobox 

message: This article mixes the usage of BCE/CE and BC/AD.  Are there standards in place for mixing one and the other?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.182.223.201 (talk) 22:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The relevant section in WP's Manual of Style states that either can be used, but should be consistent within an article.  I have edited the article appropriately. AJCham2097 (talk) 00:56, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Combining usage of BCE/CE and BC/AD

message: I want to add zilch to the beginning. Here's my source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zilch. But it won't let me edit this page. Joey Skywalker (talk) 23:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It is in there, you may wish to put a link from the Zilch disambiguation page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

text: It is actually there as the first item, I guess I did not look properly.  You have probably been set back slightly by the semi-protection, waiting for you to be around for a bit first! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why can't I edit? 

message: I think this article should have it's semi protection removed as it seems to not be target of largescale vandalism. The only mention of vandelism on this page is incorrect. Any thoughts? --AresAndEnyo (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been plenty of vandalism, perhaps not largescale, but the reason it has stopped is that semi-protection. Certainly it should be protected against page moves. If an unlogged in person wants a change they can ask on this page. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This page was last open to IP editing between 27 October and 1 December. It might be worth looking at the article history during that period to see if there was one single beneficial edit from an IP. (I did not notice any, though I did not look at every edit). Occasionally an IP will revert their own vandalism. The essay, Wikipedia:Rough guide to semi-protection, indicates that semiprotection should be considered whenever vandalism constitutes more than 5% of all edits to the article. That criterion was clearly met during the month of November. It was also evident that the majority of vandalism came from IPs during that period. EdJohnston (talk) 21:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Having a quick look over it there does seem to be some attempts by ip users at helpful edits, even if these were misguided and then reverted. I would say that vandalism constituted maybe about 10% of edits or something like that. I think we should try taking of vandalism as it may have just been under attack for that month. Is it an indef semi-protection?--AresAndEnyo (talk) 10:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The page log shows that protection will expire on 1 March. When that occurs, we can wait a few days to see if all the IP vandalism comes back, before deciding if protection should be restored. I would describe this as a 'classic vandalism target,' but I could yet be proved wrong, if the vandals don't return. EdJohnston (talk) 18:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove Semi-Protection 

message: Zero is the cardinal number of the empty set, but zero is not an ordinal number.
: "not an ordinal"...  Unless you are a C programmer.  :-).  71.199.121.113 (talk) 16:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps I can provide a different perspective. We have 10 digits 0-9. For some reason we want to consider 0 to be a different kind of digit than 1-9 even though this causes various anomalies. Let us take a look at considering the digits 0-9 to be similar. In that case the cardinal number zero corresponds to the ordinal number zeroth and the cardinal number 1 corresponds to the ordinal number first etc. Now consider a car odometer. The beginning mile is 0 or the zeroth mile because we have not yet completed a mile. At the completion of a mile we are at mile 1 or the first mile. The same holds for a person. At birth one is 0 years old and in their zeroth year. At their birthday one is 1 year old and in their first year. Like everything in mathematics one must be very careful how they define things to produce a consist system. If this had been done with the calender starting with year 0, decade 0, century 0 and millennium 0 then 2009 would be the ninth year of the zeroth decade of the 20th century or the zeroth century of the second millennium and one would have a completely consistent system. Perhaps the article could describe things as they are stating the problems and showing how they could be fixed. 24.18.222.126 (talk) 21:32, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: See East Asian age reckoning for a different take on peoples' age. Dmcq (talk) 21:51, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

text: Very interesting. However, I would have to view it as another example of inconsistency. What I am trying to get at is building a consistent system will bring out properties of zero which are not obvious otherwise. Perhaps I picked a poor example. 24.18.222.126 (talk) 22:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers

message: Tradition can be wrong, and any description of a Zero specially in Wikepedia must mention that the rational mathematical parity to the null zero, is -1 or inverse zero, an inverse dot-inverse angle versus a dot of null zero. Remember in Platos time tradition had the "earth flat". For reference only such a inverse zero exists and is fully mathematically/rationally defined as a full reference only at www.inverse19mathematics.com.
Wikipedia which is the Bible for truth in Science etc, must give a "slight open door" to a full definition , because such things may take a hundred years to be contested, as they are now being contested openly.--Vinoo Cameron (talk) 18:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is no bible of truth and that is expressly not its purpose. Please see WP:NOTE, only things that people have shown interest in by writing books about it or otherwise signalled great interest is put in. Truth is only important in reporting what is said, if everyone said pi was 22/7 and there was just some peoples own original research showing it was something else then only 22/7 would be reported. If you want to upset the status quo you can't do it by wikipedia, it only reports what people already accept. Dmcq (talk) 19:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

text: This is not a forum. It is a talk page for discussing improving the article. That does not include original research. An individual web site discussing the owner's research is counted as original research. It really does not matter as far as wikipedia is concerned whether what you say is true or not. Dmcq (talk) 23:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: ZERO NUMBER SANS DOGMA

message: "The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuja Temple at Gwalior in India, dated 876 CE. There are many documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century CE, but their authenticity may be doubted."
The above quote is challenged by the Khmer numerals article, which pushes back the certain use of zero as a numerical figure two centuries before that of the Chaturbhuja Temple: "[The Khmer Script] is the script with the first extant material evidence of zero as a numerical figure, dating its use back to the seventh century, two centuries before its certain use in India." The authenticity of the claim has so far been withheld and published in a number of studies, and like the Chaturbhuja one, it also occurs as an epigraphical inscription. - Io Katai (talk) 00:46, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Zero as a Decimal

message: The number O is also known as the symbolic sphere O. It's use historically gave a different perspective to problem solving as the symbol represented "The One". Inclusive of this is all natures language that is represented by the concept of duality. The sphere would divide as it does in birth making all life a part of the original "One". The mathematical shift occurred around 800AD when the integer of lineal placement holder replaced the ancient symbol of O. According to Robert Lawlor, 'Sacred Geometry", this was the most devastating event in history to science and philosophical thought. The current explanations for the symbol O do not include it's  philosophical meaning. This meaning is nature's law. (----)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carolgregor (talk • contribs) 02:52, 1 September 2009
:No source given, and it's mathematically and philosphically implausible.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 04:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The One

message: Should we point out that it is commonly called that in the UK More than USA? 72.165.115.67 (talk) 16:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably something that would be more appropriately addressed in this article: Names for the number 0 in English. - Io Katai (talk) 01:45, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Nought Nil and Null

message: The section Names begins with: "In 976 Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, in his Keys of the Sciences..." However, this Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was already dead even 100 years before. Maybe the other al-Khwarizmi, i.e. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwārizmī, is the right one: he is the author of Keys of the Sciences, although he was an encyclopedist (and not a mathematician like Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi), so why should he write about "0"? It looks a bit complicated, but I hope somebody around here knows the truth. See also Al-Khwārizmī (disambiguation) Duddek (talk) 02:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: two al-Khwarizmis, apparent mistake

message: Dear Colleagues,
There is an ongoing discussion on the organization of number pages and number disambiguation pages.
Your comments would be much appreciated!! Please see and participate in:
* Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Numbers#Organization_of_number_pages
Thank you for your participation!
Cheers,
PolarYukon (talk) 15:30, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Organization of number pages and number disambiguation pages

message: Assuming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi lived from 780-850, he could not have mentioned zero in 976. 
That line should be removed or corrected.
ValSaul (talk) 15:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Discrepancy in dates for Khwārizm mention of zero

message: Listing both oh and "o" seems redundant. --Belg4mit (talk) 01:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, I've removed it and also 'nada', which seems more like a slang term for 'nothing' rather than specifically zero afaics.Number36 (talk) 23:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I just looked at some other sites up that discuss 'null' as a mathematical term, and they seem to concur with the article here, in that null doesn't equate to the number/value zero as such, but to no value, or an empty set. Which could be interpreted as having zero value, but then the number zero itself would be a value. So I'll remove it from the article since it doesn't seem to be a clear synonym for the number.Number36 (talk) 02:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Also just noticed as I was doing that, this article already went into the difference between 'null' and a zero value within the text itself.Number36 (talk) 02:08, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "o" is confusing. I'd prefer oh, because at least I'd know how to pronounce it. It is unclear whether "o" is pronounced: oh, zero, little oh, or something else. Much of that section is devoted to helping people know how to pronounce the words written, and then the sentence ends...' or "o"'. seems to fall flat there... Cliff (talk) 20:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: oh

message: A few times in this article, I saw "least", which I fixed to "smallest", because "least" could confuse the reader. Because one time it said that "zero is the least ordinal number". That could be confusing, since even though 0 is the smallest ordinal number, the reader could mis-imply that 0 is less ordinal than each other ordinal number! See the Wiktionary entry on "least" here.
P.S. In the mean time I'm editing the number articles.~Wimpy Fanboy t g 17:03, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "Least" or "smallest"?

message: There is a second sense of zero, such as used by the ancient Egyptians, in the sense of 'empty'.  This is not used as a digit with others, but to show that there is an absence of digits.  The notion here is that where zero is an 'empty column' to show the absence of stones in an abacus-column, token-number (which has additive symbols for 1,10,100 etc), have numbers that behave like bags of tokens.  An empty bag is represented by the zero-rune.
Another 'empty bag' symbol is used where a column has no digit.  Such is known in greek (eg 5° 0' 22").  The greek number system of the time did not need a zero (eg fifty vs 50), and a special zero is needed to occupy an empty column.  One might write the empty column as a dash, eg 5/- means five shillings and zero pence, or  |  5 | - | 22 |  in columns for the angle measure previously quoted.  --Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Zero as 'empty bag' vs 'empty column'

message: The article begins 0 is a number, but it needs some kind of citation to back this up. Anyway the Romans for instance didn't think it was a number. 92.29.188.149 (talk) 10:57, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The "0 is a number" joke phrase has been removed. Anyway, nowadays it is a number, and although that doesn't really need a source, I have added a good one. DVdm (talk) 12:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

text: By that logic there are no such things as negative numbers or imaginary numbers or really even irrational numbers. A number is not defined by its ability to 'represent physical objects'. -Achowat (talk) 16:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: 0 is a number.

message: I found some grammar mistakes under names. It says; In 976 the Persian encyclopedist Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in his "Keys of the Sciences", remarked that if, in a calculation, no number appears in the place of tens, 'a little circle should be used "to keep the rows"
encyclopedist should be changed to encyclopedic, and before "a litte cirle should be used" there should be an and.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gizmo1313 (talk • contribs) 00:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: @Boardgamer, the little lock in the upper right of the article means that this page is under semi-protection. Click the lock to find out more.  Cliff (talk) 00:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

text: @Gizmo, encyclopedist is the correct term. It means that al-Khwarizmi was a guy who compiled knowledge into an encyclopedia. I'll try to think of a way to make this sentence more comprehensible. Right now it takes quite a bit of knowledge about the history of mathematics (and about how we write and use numbers) to understand. Cliff (talk) 00:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

text: I added "then" in the location that user:gizmo1313 suggested an "and" should be placed. I think there is one too many commas in the sentence, but I'm no English major. Cliff (talk) 01:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names 

message: During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!
* http://www.neo-tech.com/zero/part6.html
** In 0 (number) on 2011-05-20 22:35:17, 404 Not Found
** In 0 (number) on 2011-05-31 15:23:30, 404 Not Found
--JeffGBot (talk) 15:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed. Cliff (talk) 17:24, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link 

message: There should be a mention, with links, of IEEE 754 floating point formats.  In those, there are two zeroes, +0 & -0, with the same value but distinguishable by using their reciprocals.  In ECMAScript, all values X of the Number type apart from NaN have a sign which can be determined by comparing (X + 1/X) with zero. 94.30.84.71 (talk) 18:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computing : IEEE 754 signed zero 

message: Shouldn't there be a mention of the Null Hypothesis, denoted by H0, as it is used in Hypothesis Testing in statistics? Since the Null Hypothesis as part of a hypothesis test denotes the current default theory (as the Null Hypothesis entry points out) being tested, and zero is considered the default placeholder, this article should certainly mention why the Null Hypothesis is considered "null". I would edit this in myself if I could, but I am not registered as a user here and felt it was a matter best brought here for discussion. I'm also not sure where in the article one would put this bit of information. Anyone want to look into this? 76.235.164.225 (talk) 00:45, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm willing to help, but I'm not quite sure that I understand your point. I assumed the H0 notation was merely a convention, similar to how some sequences start numbering at 0 rather than at 1. Do you have a source that discusses the necessity of this style of naming? Cliff (talk) 10:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero in Statistics (Null Hypothesis) 

message: In the  In computer science section, a paragraph read:
In databases, it is possible for a field not to have a value. It is then said to have a null value. For numeric fields it is not the value zero. For text fields this is not blank nor the empty string. The presence of null values leads to three-valued logic. No longer is a condition either true or false, but it can be undetermined. Any computation including a null value delivers a null result. Asking for all records with value 0 or value not equal 0 will not yield all records, since the records with value null are excluded.
I don't know how pedantic we want to get here but in this case NULL is indeed a value: operations using it are well-defined (as opposed to undefined). A better way to think of a nullable column of type T is that its type has been extended to another type whose values include all values of type T and additionally the value NULL, whose operations have been changed to (roughly) accept and ignore the value NULL, and where additional operations such as "IS NULL" and "IS NOT NULL" have been added.
At any rate, I've changed the first two sentences to fix the gross inaccuracy (the field "not having a value"); dunno what people want to do about the rest. Personally, I think this whole thing may not belong on this page, though I certainly see a parallel in the approach of naïve thinkers to this and to the concept of the number 0, which has been considered by some as not being a number. Cjs (talk) 04:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: "Any computation including a null value delivers a null result." also isn't always true, especially for aggregate functions. Can you re-write that whole section you quoted above? I'll put it in the article for you. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 10:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "NULL" Value In Databases (Computer Science Section) 

message: 197.123.17.129 (talk) 02:42, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you want to edit in this article? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request on 11 January 2012 

message: To fix a typo, please change "calculation s" to "calculations" in the following sentence:
"Since the 4th century BC, counting rods were used in China for decimal calculation s including"
96.236.123.4 (talk) 13:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit request on 31 May 2012