Talk:Roman arithmetic

message: The Roman Numeral System was used extensively on coins.  It was a simple additive system and the symbols  IV,  IX,  IL, IC, ID and IM were not part of it.  Simply put it was I,II,III, IIII,V,VI, VII,VIII,VIIII,X then the I through VIIII was repeated through the next four Xs until the L symbol was used at XXXXVIIII.  Clear and convincing evidence of the accuracy of my explanation comes from Roman Numerals on coins up to the 18th century when the use of combined symbols IV and IX came into vogue to show a single digit symbol 4 or 9.  The Holy Roman Empire that lasted from roughly 650 A.D. to 1850 A.D. used these symbols correctly on their state and ecclisiastical coins and the Vatican and Papal states in Italy used them corectly too.  Most of this crap has been promoted under the banner of artistic license.  As time passes it gets worse as now math symbols are being interceded between the symbols too.
By the end of the Summer I plan to release essays on the original RN System,  RN System Uses, RN Systems and Modern Calendar Systems,  RN Symbols Used In Error.  The Impact of Using Roman Numerals (that are not part of the orignal) In Modern Practice.
If you have evidence of actual use of Roman Numerals Before 1500 when Arabic Numerals became popular in Europe I would be very interested.  The adoption on Gregorian Calendar and Arabic Numerals occurred in Great Britian in  MDCCLII and it's Colonies including the U. S. A.
Glen Shake  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.181.213.4 (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient Roman Numeral System 

message: I believe and the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Roman_arithmetic seems to confirm that the Romans never did arithmetic in a way proposed by this article. It is a modern day fancy and not even a notable one as shown by the lack of citations. Therefore I have prodded it. Dmcq (talk) 02:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Your argument that because Roman's used a counting table or abacus so therefore they did not do manual arithmetic is unconvincing as saying that because the modern-era had slide rules and IC-chip calculators the modern era did not do arithmetic manually.  It is already noted that the article needs attention from an expert and clearly the citation list could be longer.  I believe the article can be improved and should not be deleted.--D. Norris 05:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: So you admit it is pure conjecture on your part that the topic exists? The first reference says nothing about arithmetic and the second says they used a counting board or abacus. So even the references that are there deny the topic exists. We already have an article on Roman abacus describing how it was used for arithmetic. Dmcq (talk) 09:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

text: I would guess they used a mental abacus or their fingers rather than ever computing mentally with Roman numerals. Using a mental abacus is quite common. Here http://www.uitti.net/stephen/soroban/index.shtml is a person describing their experience of using a mental soroban and the comparison with Roman numerals . You can see how unnecessary working with the numerals would be and there is no evidence of arithmetic workings with them that I know of. Dmcq (talk) 10:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Why the attacks at me?  This is an old page that has had lot of revisions.  When I created it, I based it on an old handout from college.  Much of that material was removed and new material inserted over time.  I sort of lost interest in this page until it popped up on my radar with your prodding.  If anything, in should be updated along the lines of the material you all have been discussing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Roman_arithmetic.  While there may not be mathematical worth, there is historical worth is presenting (with cites) that we really don't know much about Roman Arithmetic.  Feel free to update it.  I am happy to help edit.  --D. Norris 13:47, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

text: I disagree with redirecting the page even to Roman Abacus (another page I originally created, btw) for the above stated reasons.  --D. Norris 13:47, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well in all that time noone has put a citation in and there is no evidence of a topic. I am sorry you think removing the article is an attack on you but stuff without any basis in reality should be removed from Wikipedia. Dmcq (talk) 19:06, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The perceived attack was "So you admit it is pure conjecture on your part that the topic exists?" I don't object to the delete prod on your part as it brought the poor condition of the page to my attention. In fact, I don't really think that there is anything I originally wrote left in the article.  Most of my original work was on basic add, subtract, multiply, divide methods using Roman numerals (I agree it is VERY difficult and not something to do for extensive calculations) which was cut from the article in 2007.  As I am not a fan of edit wars, I lost interest in the article at that point. --D. Norris 04:47, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

text: I've put a note on the talk page of Roman abacus that I redirected this there. Perhaps someone there might think there is a reason to not do that but I doubt it. Dmcq (talk) 19:34, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As I have suggested, it may be better to think of this page from a historical perspective as part of an analysis of Roman science and technology rather than as a mathematics topic.  Lets leave the redirect in place for the time being while I ponder a better way to address the topic. --D. Norris 04:47, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just unfounded conjecture