A Story of Numbers

About this chapter

A Story of Numbers is the third chapter of Class 8 Ganita Prakash Part 1. Through Reema's curiosity about a strange Mesopotamian numeral, the chapter traces the evolution of how humans count and write numbers — from Stone-Age stick tallies and one-to-one mappings, to early counting in groups of 2 (Gumulgal, Bakairi and Bushmen), to Roman landmark numerals (I, V, X, L, C, D, M), to base-n thinking with the Egyptian base-10 system, to fully positional place-value systems in Mesopotamia (base-60 sexagesimal), the Maya (almost base-20), the Chinese rod numerals, and finally the Hindu (Indian) decimal system with the digit 0. The chapter highlights Indian contributions — the Yajurveda Samhita number names by powers of 10, the Bakhshali manuscript (3rd century CE) and the first written 0, Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (499 CE) and Brahmagupta's Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta (628 CE) which treated 0 as a number. CTET Paper 2 Mathematics tests this chapter through items on landmark numbers, Roman-to-Hindu conversions, base-n representation, place-value reasoning, and pedagogy of number systems. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all six big ideas at CTET depth and difficulty.