All numbers great and small

Abstract

Some time around 760 A.D., an Arabian mathematician called al-Khowarizmi wrote a book outlining the rules for performing basic arithmetic using numbers expressed in the Hindu decimal form that we use today, with columns for units, tens, hundreds, etc., and decimal points to denote fractions. From his name comes the modern word ‘algorithm’, nowadays used to describe any set of rules for performing calculations. Computer programs are just algorithms expressed in some computing language such as BASIC, FORTRAN, or PASCAL. (At least, computer programs concerned with mathematical calculations are algorithms. In other cases it may or may not be the case that an ‘algorithm’ is involved.)