, 7 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
1/ While this may be a funny joke, no, it's not a testament to "American bigotry", but is instead an example social media polarization. For one thing, the term "Arabic numerals" is ambiguous. For another, "ignorance" is not the same as "bigotry".
2/ Yes, we often call our digits 1,2,3,4... "Arabic" numerals, but they aren't the same as the numerals Arabs use. When you say "Arabic numerals", are you refering to these digits used in Europe and most of the world? Or specifically the form Arabs use?
3/ Our digits actually come from India, through the Arabs. They are better described as "Hindu-Arabic Numerals". Just look at our digits and you can see they are closer to what the ancient Hindus used than what Arabs use today.
4/ In any case, "ignorance" is not the same as "bigotry". Just because somebody doesn't know that we often call our digits "Arabic numbers" doesn't mean they are a bigot, just ignorant of that fact -- a meaningless fact of trivia.
5/ Also, teaching students what modern Arabic numerals look like is as pointless as teaching students other traditional numerals. Nobody is shouting for teaching students traditional Japanese numerals.
6/ BTW, as this tweet points out, the important historical issue isn't the form of the digits themselves but the fact that we use a "positional" number system.
7/ The big invention is the number zero, and how we represent ten as "10" rather than "X" (as in roman numbers). With this positional system, we can have arbitrarily large numbers, whereas things like Roman numerals break down for big numbers, having no letters for them.
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