Ysi Earth world map II

[Karro]

Ohoho, very good, very good, and so close. But there is one assumption there that will drive you insane as you try to apply it to THIS system... *cackle*



I'll help: it's not roman or pure arabic. There are still other numeral systems out there. In fact, this numeral system is unique (yet as logical as any), not to be found in nature.

Yeah, I don't assume I'll solve this, per se. As I said, I'm not familiar enough with other number systems, outside the Roman and Arabic, to glean other clues. But maybe some of my musings on this conundrum will help someone figure it out.

Looking at this latest selection of numbers, a few additional thoughts occur to me:

Orientation: I'm not sure if any existing number systems are affected by this, but I'm curious if the orientation of the figure might affect it's value or meaning.

Modified Characters: I also wonder if there are other specific and regular changes we might make to a glyph that modify it's meaning or value, like the attachment of certain diacritic-like marks.

One thing is for certain, the number of digits in your numbers aren't a predictable indicator of value. From the latest example, we see the number 412 requires 4 digits to display correctly, whereas 468 requires only 2. Further, the two numbers don't have any digits in common, as far as I can tell.

[Naeddyr]

Modified Characters: I also wonder if there are other specific and regular changes we might make to a glyph that modify it's meaning or value, like the attachment of certain diacritic-like marks.

I will outright say that orientation, placement and modification do not change the numbers' value or anything about them.

[Karro]

Okay, so my last set of musings on these numbers for tonight.

Some additional assumptions and concepts that may need to be questioned:

The existence of 0. Zero is a very important concept mathematically, but is not common to all number systems. The roman system has no 0 or equivalent. If I remember correctly, 0 was invented in India and borrowed into the arabic system. Without a 0, the way I detailed how base-x systems won't work. For instance, without 0 in our system, we would have to have a symbold to represent 10 because we cannot denote the value of 10 by the position of a 1 in the tens place followed by a zero in the ones place. So, we might have a symbol that represents 10. To represent 11, we might follow the symbol that represents 10 with the symbol that represents 1 (or vice versa, depending on the order of the numerals). To represent 20, we might have one of two (or more that I haven't considered) methods: repeating the 10's symbol (as in the roman system, two instances of the 10's symbol "X" adding to represent 20) or we might preceed or follow the ten's symbol with the symbol for 2, meaning that we have 2 10's.

Another assumption is which digits need to be represented by unique symbols. In the roman system, for instance, there is a symbol that represents a 1, one that represents 5, one that represents 10, one that represents 50, 100, and so on. (I'm not sure, but I'd wager the roman system is a hybrid base-5/10 system.) Numbers in between are represented by operations on the existing symbols. II means 2 because we add to the two symbols for 1 together. IV means 4 because we subtract the symbol for 1 from the symbol for 5.

Lastly, all I have time for is to consider how you might be able to represent 468 with two digits while requiring 4 to represent 412. I pick this comparison because it is the most obvious example of the number of digits playing against our expectations on their value.

From this we can glean a few things. First, I think the base we are working with has to be something higher than 10, or at least that we have unique glyphs that represent values greater than 10. I think this is the only way we can represent something like 468 in only 2 digits. We could have one of these digits represent the value of 68 and one the value of 400 (very unlikely, and mathematically cumbersome, but provided as an illustration of an example). Or, the two numberals could be representing values that are multiplied and whose product is 468, for instance 9 times 52 or 39 times 12. Or one could represent a value greater than 468, and the other an amount subtracted from that value. For instance one could represent 32 and one 500, with the difference being 468.

Honestly, though, none of these seems right in this situation. 468 is such an unweildy number, and doesn't easily factor into any simple, meaningful numbers that I can currently see.