Monday, May 17, 2010

Representing numbers in #Wikipedia

In a discussion on IRC the representation of numbers was discussed. It turns out that numbers are not really considered in MediaWiki. When you want to express a number it is expected that you use Arabic numerals.

When other numerals are in use for a language, the trick is to change the CSS to replace the characters. The problem is how to turn this off for the article on numerals..

OmegaWiki has a nice way of annotating the different expressions for a number.. It is defined on the number class. The only thing left is learning in how many ways a number like two can be expressed.
Thanks,
      GerardM

4 comments:

James Salsman said...

How much cultural sensitivity towards non-Arabic numeral systems is appropriate? As a monoglot I may be biased, but I wonder whether perpetuating disjoint sets of mathematical symbols helps or hinders math education for those saddled, with, for example, two sets of numerals.

GerardM said...

There is not just one Arabic numeral system.. the one we call Arabic is just the one best known :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Unknown said...

I'd say in China Chinese numeral is still widely used. And it means more than a billion user. Yet I'm unable to add a chinese numeral on OmegaWiki http://www.omegawiki.org/DefinedMeaning:ett%20%285433%29?dataset=uw (see its talk page)

GerardM said...

I have added for both traditional and simplified the Mandarin numerals.
They are not the same I learned..
Thanks,
GerardM