Decimal the Roman numerals did, an intermediate base of 5. Notably, the polymath Archimedes (ca. 287–212 BC) invented a decimal positional system in his Sand Reckoner which was based on 10 and later led the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss to lament what heights science would have already reached in his days if Archimedes had fully realized the potential of his ingenious discovery. The Hittites hieroglyphs (since 15th century BC), just like the Egyptian and early numerals in Greece, was strictly decimal. Some non-mathematical ancient texts like the Vedas dating back to 1900–1700 BCE make use of decimals and mathematical decimal
Decimal to the left of the decimal separator (see also truncation). For a nonnegative decimal, it is the largest integer that is not greater than the decimal. The part from the decimal separator to the right is the "fractional part", which equals the difference between the numeral and its integer part. When the integral part of a numeral is zero, it may occur, typically in computing, that the integer part is not written (for example , instead of ). In normal writing, this is generally avoided because of the risk of confusion between the decimal mark and other punctuation. Decimal numerals