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 but may be a comma "" in other countries (mainly in Europe). For representing a nonnegative number, a decimal consists of It is generally assumed that, if , the first digit is not zero, but, in some circumstances, it may be useful to have one or more 0's on the left. This does not change the value represented by the decimal. For example, . Similarly, if , it may be removed, and conversely, trailing zeros may be added without changing the represented number. For example, and . sometimes, the unnecessary zeros are used for indicating the accuracy of a measurement.