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The oldest known multiplication tables were used by the Babylonians about 4000 years ago. [2] However, they used a base of 60. [2] The oldest known tables using a base of 10 are the Chinese decimal multiplication table on bamboo strips dating to about 305 BC, during China's Warring States period. [2] "Table of Pythagoras" on Napier's bones [3]
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60, [1] is a numeral system with sixty as its base.It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.
For example, multiplication is granted a higher precedence than addition, and it has been this way since the introduction of modern algebraic notation. [2] [3] Thus, in the expression 1 + 2 × 3, the multiplication is performed before addition, and the expression has the value 1 + (2 × 3) = 7, and not (1 + 2) × 3 = 9.
Common tools in early arithmetic education are number lines, addition and multiplication tables, counting blocks, and abacuses. [ 186 ] Later stages focus on a more abstract understanding and introduce the students to different types of numbers, such as negative numbers, fractions, real numbers, and complex numbers.
The Babylonian system of mathematics was a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system. From this we derive the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle. [8] The Babylonians were able to make great advances in mathematics for two reasons.
Multiplication by a positive number preserves the order: For a > 0, if b > c, then ab > ac. Multiplication by a negative number reverses the order: For a < 0, if b > c, then ab < ac. The complex numbers do not have an ordering that is compatible with both addition and multiplication. [30]
Mathematical tables are lists of numbers showing the results of a calculation with varying arguments.Trigonometric tables were used in ancient Greece and India for applications to astronomy and celestial navigation, and continued to be widely used until electronic calculators became cheap and plentiful in the 1970s, in order to simplify and drastically speed up computation.
The multiplicative order of a number a modulo n is the order of a in the multiplicative group whose elements are the residues modulo n of the numbers coprime to n, and whose group operation is multiplication modulo n. This is the group of units of the ring Z n; it has φ(n) elements, φ being Euler's totient function, and is denoted as U(n) or ...