What is the Roman Numeral for zero?

Please share your thoughts about "things that make you go 'Hmmm' ":

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

In response to last week’s questions, “What is the Roman Numeral for zero?”, my college rommie, John, who I saw this past week for the first time in XX years and is still looking well, shared his actuarial understanding, “XO – XO”. Similarly, my videographer friend Ivan explained, “It is accepted practice to use subtractive notation in Roman Numerals, so that instead of IIII for 4, four becomes lV. Using this strategy, I conclude that placing a I in front of another I therefore subtracts I from I, resulting in zero. It looks like this: II. See? Easy. So whenever you see 2, think zero!” All it takes is a little logic and you can figure most things out. Now I feel qualified to teach your kids in your local public school.”

While my colleague Swany also thought it was “I minus I,” my Dad’s beach buddy applied shorthand by writing “-I”.

My sailing friend Vaughn, who apparently speaks many languages, wrote, “The Roman Numeral for zero is "N" for nothing, null, nada.” However, Ivan thought “the rarely used ‘N’ stood for Nulla,” To this, my sailing and writing friend Rich added, “In Ancient Rome "Everybody was Somebody.’ The town of Snellville has no zeros either because "Everybody is Somebody".”

My cousin Wes noted, “Being the supercivilization, Romans never ran out of anything, hence they had no use for a zero. As they were counting the remaining troops after a battle, zero was not needed since zero person would not be alive to write.”

My friend Ivan countered, “The Roman system was changed slightly in the middle ages, as everyone knows. Since people don't much like the middle ages, you know, their 40's, 50's, the zero has been done away with much the way hoteliers have removed 13 when numbering the floors.”

My woodcarving and sailing friend Doug responded, “I can't think of a funny answer, but the real answer is "N/A" The Romans didn't believe in the concept of nothing being a number. That's why there was no year Zero. The Christians believe Jesus was born in the year One. That's why the millenium started in the year 2001 and not 2000.”

“So we can say that the Romans had no nothing,” wrote Doug’s and my friend Stuart. “Since that is a double-negative, I guess they had something.”

Alas, my birthday bud Jon, did find a Roman Zero on Broadway (see link above).

My sailing friend and Renaissance man Mike concluded, “Roman numerals were not positional (like our 0-9 Base 10 system) so zero wasn’t necessary:
So let’s go sailing, or at least drink rum and play with model trains.”

Live well...laugh often and heartily….be happy and have a good week…

Hal

Want to know more? My friend Stuart wrote, “The concept of zero was developed by the Hindus around 9th century CE. Babylonians and Olmecs used zero as a placeholder for writing numbers much earlier, but zero was not used in calculation. The Romans did not need such a place holder. By the way, if you have a sick mind like mine and really want to learn some math history, read ZERO, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife or go to http://www.mathematische-basteleien.de/romannumerals.htm, as my friend Mike suggested.