
Who’s Afraid of Arabic Numerals? - Edmond
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/opinion/arabic-numerals.html
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russellbeattie
Yeah, yeah, a bunch of Americans are ignorant xenophobes, we know.

But just to add, I much prefer the term "Hindu-Arabic" as it gives proper
credit to both the creators and influencers of the numeral system
(specifically, thinking of zero as a number in itself, and as a digit).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system)

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Edmond
Veep's Jonah Ryan definitely is afraid of them :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embMAtagQiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embMAtagQiU)

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27182818284
Yes, Veep's writers have joked they've had a hard time writing things that
would be, well, something you wouldn't find in real life—something completely
ridiculous even in the current state of politics. When they're character
running for President of the United States rails against Arabic numerals.
Snopes actually collected fake or satirical pieces about politicians being
against Arabic numerals at least as far back as 2016 it looks like.

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stunt
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Origins)

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FullyFunctional
EDIT: I was wrong.

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apta
> that while the Arabs writes numbers like they write text, right-to-left

Incorrect. Arabs write numbers left to right.

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FullyFunctional
Thank you, I was wrong

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linuxftw
Arabic Numerals as Americans understand them are representative of the
characters used when writing in Arabic. The term is ambiguous.

So, this article is frivolous.

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Edmond
I think the point of the survey was to gauge prejudice as opposed to
determining if people knew the difference between numbers written in Arabic
versus Arabic Numerals (Base 10 number system).

I suspect the biased responses were of the knee-jerk variety, meaning they
didn't even have the curiosity to determine what Arabic numerals actually
meant.

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linuxftw
I think the point of the survey was to write an inflammatory article picking
on ignorant Americans.

"numbers written in Arabic" is the same as "Arabic Numerals" because that's
what "Arabic Numerals" means to Americans without any additional context. We
don't have an everyday term for western-style numbers, but you can draw
context for "X Numerials" from "Roman Numerals" which clearly indicates a
different character set for representing numerical values.

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FullyFunctional
Inflammatory? Nobody forced them to answer "no" even if they ignorantly didn't
know that numeric digits are called Arabic numerals. You cannot argue in good
faith that the pool didn't expose intolerance.

I can't see any argument for denying the teaching of anything outside of
falsehoods. Teaching is supposed to be about learning something new, typically
outside your comfort zone.

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linuxftw
What you seem to be missing is the average person does not call them "Arabic
numerals." Additionally, it's 100% valid to call numbers written in Arabic
characters "Arabic numerals." We can't draw _any_ conclusion from this survey,
but despite this, the author decides to make all sorts of inferences. Because
this survey appears to be entirely useless on the face of it, I think it was
designed especially for some sort of confirmation-bias rather than testing an
actual hypothesis.

Show me the corresponding survey for "Japanese Numerals" and then we can have
an actual discussion. While you're at it, show me the survey for non-Americans
asked the same question.

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FullyFunctional
In my primary education we (me and my other average students) were taught that
they are "Arbic numberals".

But you are insisting on ignoring the point entirely. Had the question been
about "Japanese Numerals" the answer should still have been "YES!"

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linuxftw
For what? There's no utility for learning Japanese characters for most
Americans. I can come up with a very long list of things people should know
how to read before I get to foreign-language character sets.

