brmv, the greeks and romans existed a long time ago -- good to inform yourself, but learn to do it with context. The greeks and romans did not use a high level of mathematics, and they also did not use negative numbers. Thus there was no need for zero, in our modern world today, zero is a mathematical proof of the absolute magnitude of numbers. Because 32-32=0, and not 1 or any other number also, without 0 we would not have had negative numbers, which is a vital part of our current model...
Zero is absolutely essential, and all other numbers do infact become meaningless without zero, because if the concept of a 'nothing' number didn't exist then none of our current math would exist...draw me a cartesian coordinate system without zero on it -- you can't can you? Because each time you try to draw it, theres a logical hole at the center which you refuse to label but is there, but suppose you didn't even leave a hole at the center, then you would see that -1 and 1 are right next to each other and now your entire system is lopsided, there will always be one more negative than positive or vice versa depending on how you drew it. And that is why you need zero, because with your lopsided system you can't have a proper reference point to quantify numbers...negatives would never be equal to positives in terms of magnitude...

perhaps you should read again what i pointed to
you certainly do not need to tell me anything about mathematics
everyone who has studied mathematics knows something about the history of mathematics as well
and in case you did not know, the greek and romans did a lot of mathematics as well
or haven't you heard of pytagoras?

zero was probably implied and just not defined?


look, i'm asking you to think for yourself. The romans and greeks may have gotten along without it, and if you asked me how, i probably couldn't explain it. It may have been that counting is instinctive, and by saying "there's 1 of that", you automatically assume 0 as your reference. Like the quote said, they may just have been uncertain about whether to define it as something when all it represented was nothing. Logically though, in a period where we have 2 dimensional planes, I really don't see how mathematics could function without zero. If you want to argue that it's possible, by all means do so. However, opening up your history book isn't going to make up for a lack of critical thought.

This post was edited by Abstraction on Dec 14 2008 11:34am

A^2 + B^2 = c^2 isn't complex math, socrates or whoever came up with pi...thats really not complex either...at all. They did not use negatives either, whats there to explain, zero simply wasn't needed.....our current mathematics would not be the same without 0, you were trying to say that numbers aren't meaningless without 0. Well in mathematical theory they are aren't they? You have no reference point and therefore there is no such thing as absolute values...

This guys done it.

you still don't get the point i made
try to find a (simple) book on the history of mathematics and read up please
btw, i never said that the majority of current higher mathematics does not need zero but
there is still a lot you can do without using zero in itself, eg
a lot in number theory and there are other systems for generating numbers
but from what you said i doubt that you are aware of that

You got a point there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbz-CefzT-g



That video explains the theory he's talking about.

This post was edited by datajunky on Dec 14 2008 01:27pm

0 zero.