>Sorry if this has already been posted. I haven't been following this
>froup closely for some time.
>My son's grade 4 teacher sent home a powerpoint presentation that she
>thought (and apparently the kids also thought) was amazing. The opening
>is "I shared this with my students today and they really found it
>interesting. They wanted me to forward it to you so they could share it
>at home!" but it's signed with the wrong initial (J instead of C) so
>I'm pretty sure even that part is part of the forwarded email. The next
>line has four exclamation marks (!!!!), a serious warning sign.
>The powerpoint purports to explain the origin of Western numerals, as
>arising from the number of angles in each number. There's a version of
>it at http://www.scribd.com/doc/13244252/Number-Story .
> The misspellings in the ppt were my first flag, and the explanation
>didn't fit with what I remembered for the early shapes of the numbers,
>so I looked for something to refute it. I found
>A history of mathematical notations, Volume 1, By Florian Cajori
>published in 1928-29
>http://books.google.com/books?id=7juWmvQSTvwC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA64#v=onepa...
>p. 64.
>"96. Fanciful hypotheses on the origin of the numeral forms"
>[A fine, dismissive tone is struck, including the potential motto "they
>were as convinced of the correctness of their explanations as are
>circle-squarers of the soundness of their quadratures."]
>He explicitly dismisses the angle theory:
>"A French writer, P. Voizet[2], entertained the theory that originally a
>numeral contained as many angles as it represents units, as seen in Part
>V. He did not claim credit for this explanation, but ascribed it to a
>writer in the Genova Catholico Militaire."
>Part V is one line in a table of XIII fanciful hypotheses, neatly
>matching the explanation given in the powerpoint.
>The footnote [2] refers to
>"Les chiffres arabes et leur origine," La nature (2d semestre, 1899),
>Vol. XXVII, p. 222
>An earlier reference to the fanciful hypotheses, less detailed but even
>more dismissive (and even more elaborately phrased), is
>The Hindu-Arabic Numerals By David Eugene Smith, Louis Charles Karpinski
>1911
>http://books.google.com/books?id=n5lRxtQhVG4C&lpg=PA36&ots=WeMFpwXq9V...
>"Of absolute nonsense about the origin of the symbols which we use much
>has been written. Conjectures, however, without any historical evidence
>for support, have no place in a serious discussion of the gradual
>evolution of the present numeral forms."
>They also cite Monsieur Voizet, though in this case apparently not for
>the angles theory but for his own "strokes" idea.
>In any case, it seems that this notion, though entertaining, is pretty
>much a load of dingos' kidneys, so feel free to contemptuoulsy mock your
>children when they prattle merrily about this.
>(I am closing my Panix account, regretfully, so if anyone needs to
>contact me I'm now at iayork.com.)
>Ian "getting bent" York
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