Advantages and disadvantages of the Modern Number System?

Answer 1

Advantages:

* Use of various "places" (e.g. ones, tens, hundreds) to write powers of ten. This means that we can do "long math" as we know it. (Ever tried doing long math with Roman Numerals?)

* Decimal (base 10) is large enough to make numbers reasonably sized but small enough to easily learn. Disadvantages:

* Numbers are written/read from left to right, even though the ones place is the building block. This is why most people were taught to work from right to left in long math problems. * Unless its meaning has been explained before, a number does not easily show what it stands for. (The alternative to this would be to use dots/lines; . for 1, : for 2, etc.) Please feel free to add to this!