this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
1137 points (97.8% liked)

Memes

45745 readers
1671 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

IIRC Hindus didn't have a "proper" 0, and Arabs did, which I guess is the reason why they got the credit

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Zero was (in its modern form) invented in India. It’s pretty fundamental to the concept of Hindu-Arabic numerals too: it’s how we represent numbers such as 10, 100, and so on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am speechless. My guy. Aryabhatta.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah after some quick googling it looks like I'm wrong. I'm quite sure that's what I was taught in school though, so blame my teacher !

Basically I was taught that Hindus invented the 0 for base-10 numerals, but didn't actually use it for maths (e.g 0*x = 0), whereas Arab mathematicians did.