Fewer than half of those who rated their Roman numerals knowledge as “very good” got all our questions right when put to the test
Class please, if you don’t learn Roman numerals you’ll never know the dates certain motion pictures were copyrighted
- Edna Krabappel, The Simpsons
Despite their very limited use in the modern age, Roman numerals still appear on the national curriculum at Key Stage 2. With children in Years 3, 4 and 5 expected to know how to use the old fashioned numbering system, how many British adults are also able to interpret them?
We gave the public a short test, but before doing so, we asked them to self-rate their ability to interpret Roman numerals. Almost two thirds of Britons (64%) claimed to be good at interpreting Roman numerals, including 14% who rate their skills as “very good”. A third describe their skills as bad, with 10% describing them as “very bad”.
The test itself showed Britons six different Roman numerals of varying complexity, and asked them to tell us what numbers they represented. Overall, just 15% got all our questions correct – even among those who rated their skills as “very good”, fewer than half (44%) got every question right.
At the easiest end of the scale, virtually everyone (97%) correctly stated that III is Roman for ‘3’. Even among those Britons who rated their Roman numerals knowledge as “very bad”, 88% still got this answer right.
Four in five Britons (81%) were also able to correctly interpret XVII to mean ‘17’, but some are clearly thrown by the Roman numerals practice of subtractive notation – in our case that putting an I before an X indicates that the value of the I should be subtracted from the X – with only 74% correctly saying that IX means ‘9’.
It also seems that some Roman numeral characters might be less well known than others – only half (50%) correctly interpreted LXXIV to denote ‘74’. Many appear to have mistaken the L for 100, with the most common incorrect answer being ‘124’.
What are the Roman numerals?
I – 1
V – 5
X – 10
L – 50
C – 100
D – 500
M – 1,000
Numbers are formed by adding values from left to right, e.g.
- III is 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
- VI is 5 + 1 = 6
- LXV is 50 + 10 +5 = 65
Some Roman numerals involve ‘subtractive notation’, i.e. putting a smaller number before a bigger one to indicate that it should be subtracted
- IV is 5 - 1 = 4
- IX is 10 - 1 = 9
- XL is 50 - 10 = 40
- CM is 1000 - 100 = 900
When it came to our more advanced questions, only a quarter of Britons (25%) correctly stated that CDXC means ‘490’. Given this number uses both two cases of subtractive notation AND one of the more obscure numerals, it is perhaps surprising that fewer people were actually able to guess that the numeral MDCLXVIII means ‘1668’ - although the latter number had been chosen because it contained every numeral, so it seems slightly more people were tripped up by the inclusion of the less commonly known numerals.
How would you rate your own skills with Roman numerals, and do you think they are still important to teach? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
