engleski

An early appearance of nondecimal notation in secondary education

The paper discusses probably the earliest appearance of non-decimal positional number systems in a general mathematics and science textbook: the Instruction in the philosophical and mathematical sciences for the upper classes in schools and gymnasia, a secondary level mathematics textbook (published in several editions from 1773 to 1810) by the German mathematician Johann Jacob Ebert. The binary system appears already in the first edition, later editions include also notes on the bases 4 and 12. These are not used further in the book, but serve only the purpose of illustrating the arbitrariness of the choice of the base 10.

Johann Jacob Ebert ; 18th century arithmetic textbooks ; binary notation ; decimal notation ; positional number systems

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