Question 1 - Page 58 - Some Early Number Systems - Chapter 3 Class 8 - A Story of Numbers (Ganita Prakash)

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Question 1 - Page 58 What could be the difficulties with using a number system that counts only in groups of a single particular size? How would you represent a number like 1345 in a system that counts only by 5s?The main difficulty is that representing large numbers becomes extremely cumbersome and inefficient. Example with 1345: If we had a system that only had a symbol for the number "5", we would have to repeat that symbol enough times to add up to 1345. We would need to divide 1345 by 5 𝟏𝟑𝟒𝟓/𝟓=𝟐𝟔𝟗 We would have to write the symbol for "5" exactly 269 times to represent the number 1345. This shows why a system needs "refinement" (like higher value landmark numbers) to handle larger quantities efficiently.