h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi , Good to see you in PR

'wiht' is Old English - we get words like 'wight' from it. I got this definition from the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

I think your NIL computer definition is a bit obscure. I've grown up with RDBMS's and NULL is more common, but as you said it's not really zero, it's the absence of any value. I'll have a think about what would fit in here.

Icy

Entry: Zero - A21345077
Author: Icy North - U225620

Niks pronounced nix is a common verbal word for niets (nothing) in Dutch.

Groetjes, Max

I've mentioned the Dutch use of nix in a footnote.

Icy

In his book, 'What the Past Did For Us', Adam Hart-Davis mentions the name of Aryhabata in connection with 'zero:

'In 499, the mahematician and astronomer Aryhabata wrote an important text explaining the Indian method for recording and manipulating numbers. Aryhabata used just ten symbols - 1, 2, 3..... and 0 - but he allocated his symbols a specific place in each number.....


Also, it may be worth including this quote from Einstein:

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught
us how to count, without which no worthwhile
scientific discovery could have been made."
- Albert Einstein -

Al,

Many thanks for this, and your other suggestions too - much appreciated.

I've added both - the first is mentioned as a footnote, as there appears to be disagreement over the dates.

Icy

This is really excellent

(you may know that zero, or at most 'negligible', is an engineer's best friend)

>>After the complex Sumerian number system had fallen into disuse<<
*complicated* would be a better word unless you mean that the Sumerian number system included the square root of negative one.

>>In our base 10 decimal system, all numbers which divide by ten end with a zero<<
This is slightly confusing, because all numbers divide by 10, but I know what you mean. I'd suggest a slight change:
->In our base 10 decimal system, all numbers which which are multiples of ten end with a zero<-

>>According to Isaac Newton's laws of motion, if a particle is at rest, then adding together all the forces acting upon it will result in the zero vector. If a rigid body is at rest, then all the torques (turning forces) acting about any point will also add together to result in the zero vector.<<
I cannot allow you to leave out the 'trivial solution'
I might suggest adding (parenthetically, of course) something like:
(Summing things and ending up with zero is of course very interesting, but when the things themselves are zero then it's trivial. Indeed, the name 'trivial solution' is reserved for just this result.)

'Neither a borrower nor a lender be'
I like that quote in this context - very good choice

Somewhere in the vicinity of 'ground zero' would it also be of interest to mention 'point blank'?

(There's a joke, btw, that refers to a geographical type of zero - namely that a particular city is so small, the city limit signs are back-to-back. But of course the list of zeroes is endless and one has to stop somewhere)

Tremendous - good work

This is not VIP it is her boy friend. I just read the top of the article and I agree about not calling the Sumerian system complex. I might even skip on complicated - it made some things very easy (representation of thirds accurately in a floating point system for example) and some people think it may have been more flexible than our own before the invention of computers.

The negative 0 on a computer screen (or some system using computers like a car thermometer) is caused by the computer floating point representation system (not quite the same as using it in the maths context) that does have 2 zeros. This is a characteristic of computers and how they have been built rather than a correct interpretation of the maths.

Cheers enjoyed the article - hope this helps

Thanks Pailaway,

I have dropped the word 'complex'.

I think mentioning a trivial solution for the statics problem would only serve to confuse. There is a linked entry on Newton's Laws, and I believe this level of detail should be included either there or in a separate entry on statics.

I've added a few words on 'point-blank'.


Thanks VIP's boyfriend! (Why not sign up and have your own account?)

I've added a short footnote to clarify the negative zero phenomenon.

Icy

>>I think mentioning a trivial solution for the statics problem would only serve to confuse<<

Awww, oh well - as I said, the list of zeroes is endless and one has to stop somewhere.

Neat Entry, Icy

For the history, you could try John Barrow, "The Book of Nothing" (ISBN 0-099-28845-1). Barrow cites Sumeria c 3000BC as the first symbolic null (ie signifying a count of no items) and Babylon (c 2000BC) as the first positional zero (ie shifting orders of magnitude through multiplying by the base). He acknowledges the Mayan zero as an independent development, but you imply that this was contemporary with the Eastern developments and it certainly wasn't - the Mayans only got there around 500AD. He also suggests that the 7th century Indian zero was the first appearance of a circle symbol for zero in a decimal system.

Ptolemy doesn't appear in Barrow's account! (no reference to him in the index)

Incidentally it isn't correct to say that Sumerian counting was pure base 60. They had different base scales for different counting systems. 60 was used for time - hence 60s minutes and 60 minute hours.

Thanks Pin

I'm probably not going to be able to get hold of John Barrow's book, but I've tweaked the history section in line with what you posted - much appreciated.

Is that better?

Icy

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Hi Icy, well done, a good, interesting read this.


ST.

Well, thanks, ST. Glad you enjoyed it.

Congrats

Congratulations!

Traveller in Time on top
"Zero down one to go ? "

Thanks all!

Thanks - I'm about half-way through that one! If you're interested, I'll post it into a guide entry...

Icy