阿拉伯數字為甚麼被廣泛採用?

阿拉伯數字是一種數字系統。
現代所稱的阿拉伯數字以十進位為基礎，採用0、1、2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9共10個計數符號。採取位值法，高位在左，低位在右，從左往右書寫。藉助一些簡單的數學符號（小數點、負號等），這個系統可以明確的表示所有的有理數。為了表示極大或極小的數字，人們在阿拉伯數字的基礎上創造了科學記數法。一般也用阿拉伯數字表示其它進位的數，用時選一部分數字或增加幾個數字。阿拉伯數字始創於中印邊界地區，後來傳到中東地區的阿拉伯地區，而得此名。現在它已成為目前使用最廣泛的數字系統，通行於全世界。阿拉伯數字在Unicode碼中的位置是048到057。
數學符號不只被使用於數學裡，更包含於物理科學、工程及經濟學內。此一符號的複雜度可由較簡單的符號表示，如數字1及2；函數符號sin和+，至概念性符號，如lim和dy/dx；至等式及變數。
數學符號是一書寫系統，用於記錄數學內的概念。

其使用可以有精確語意的符號或符號表示式。
在數學史裡，此些符號已標記了數字、形狀、圖像和變化。其亦包括一部份數學家之間所習慣用於論述的符號。
書寫的工具記述如下，但一般現今的工具大部份為紙和筆，或者是電腦螢幕和鍵盤，以及黑板和粉筆。數學符號的一關鍵要點為對數學概念的系統性依附，此亦記述如下。(其他相關概念還有：主語、邏輯論證、信服、數理邏輯和模型論等。)
另見數學符號表
數學符號的歷史

計數
一般相信數學標記在50,000年前開始發展，以協助計數。早期用作計數的數學概念是石塊、樹枝、骨頭、黏土、木雕、繩結的彙集。The tally stick is a timeless way of counting. Perhaps the oldest known mathematical texts are those of ancient Sumer. The Census Quipu of the Andes and the Ishango Bone from Africa both used the tally mark method of accounting for numerical concepts.

幾何變得解析
The mathematical viewpoints in geometry did not lend themselves well to counting. The natural numbers, their relationship to fractions, and the identification of continuous quantities actually took millennia to take form, and even longer to allow for the development of notation. It was not until the invention of analytic geometry by René Descartes that geometry became more subject to a numerical notation. Some symbolic shortcuts for mathematical concepts came to be used in the publication of geometric proofs. Moreover, the power and authority of geometry's theorem and proof structure greatly influenced non-geometric treatises, Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, for example.

計數數械化
After the rise of Boolean algebra and the development of positional notation, it became possible to mechanize simple circuits for counting, first by mechanical means, such as gears and rods, using rotation and translation to represent changes of state, then by electrical means, using changes in voltage and current to represent the analogs of quantity. Today, computers use standard circuits to both store and change quantities, which represent not only numbers, but pictures, sound, motion, and control.

Computerized notation
The rise of expression evaluators such as calculators and slide rules were only part of what was required to mathematicize civilization. Today, keyboard-based notations are used for the e-mail of mathematical expressions, the Internet shorthand notation. The wide use of programming languages, which teach their users the need for rigor in the statement of a mathematical expression (or else the compiler will not accept the formula) are all contributing toward a more mathematical viewpoint across all walks of life.
For some people, computerized visualizations have been a boon to comprehending mathematics that mere symbolic notation could not provide. They can benefit from the wide availability of devices, which offer more graphical, visual, aural, and tactile feedback.

表意符號
In the history of writing, ideographic symbols arose first, as more-or-less direct renderings of some concrete item. This has come full circle with the rise of computer visualization systems, which can be applied to abstract visualizations as well, such as for rendering some projections of a Calabi-Yau manifold.
Examples of abstract visualization which properly belong to the mathematical imagination, can be found, for example in computer graphics. The need for such models abounds, for example, when the measures for the subject of study are actually random variables and not really ordinary mathematical functions.