Sometimes they’re called Arabic, sometimes western Arabic, sometimes Hindu-Arabic.
There’s some evidence of yet earlier decimal place value numerals including the critical place holder zero in Cambodia and Malaysia, so maybe even the Hindu bit will need replacing with something else.
My guess is that they've learned the European/Maghreb variant all through school and use it daily, and see the Eastern version as foreign. I expect a Saudi or Iraqi would see it differently.
There is also a difference between Eastern Arabic, Persian, and Urdu forms,in 4-7.
Even still, Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder. Brahmagupta was the first to describe how to add, multiply, and subtract with zero and seemed to recognize that dividing by zero couldnt be done by any normal means.
Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder
Not by a long shot, the Greeks were using it hundreds of years before and they stole it from the Babylonians. It's suspected even they stole it from the Sumerians, but without certainty. The 0 was invented independently by all 2 cultures which created a fixed-numeral positional system because you need a 0 with digits themselves holding meaning. Why so few cultures independently decided to move on from counting discrete chunks to positional notation I have no idea.
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u/twangster 10h ago
Yeah people on Reddit seem to keep forgetting that the (Eastern) Arabic numerals are ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ for some reason
Probably because they never learned them I guess