> Which numeral system do the symbols 0, 1, 2, and 3 come from?And the answer: Hindu-Arabic. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system is what we use today. Consisting of 10 digitsbetween 0 and 9, the system originated in India in the 6th or 7th century, andwas introduced to Europe by Middle Eastern mathematicians.Photo: Canva.comIn what is now Uzbekistan, a man named al-Khwarizimi was born inthe year 780 – a fact which would lead to the mathematical systems as we knowthem today. First referred to as an instructor at one of the great, ancientIslamic learning institutions, the Baghdad House of Wisdom, Khwarizimi studiedthe great predecessors of the emergent discipline of mathematics. During hisstudies, Khwarizimi quickly realized that many of the preexisting calculationsdone by the Egyptian astronomer, mathematician, and geographer Ptolemy and othermathematicians were wrong, and set to correct them himself. With new coordinatesand the help of geographers, Khwarizimi compiled a book called The Face of theEarth, a complete explanation of the geography and cartography of the knownworld, which was thought to be the first of its kind. A page from The Compendious Book On Calculation by Completion and Balancing. Public domain.Yet Khwarizimi's first love lay not in astronomy but inmathematics. Upon accepting a commission from Muslim leaders to create a textfor the general public to learn basic calculations, Khwarizimi created a booktitled The Compendious Book On Calculation by Completion and Balancing. In it,Khwarizimi explained equations and fractions by use of a system he called Al-Jabr, or Completion. Sound familiar? This phrase was later Anglicized to"Algebra."Though Khwarizimi did not invent algebra, he codified the public understandingof it while synthesizing mathematic traditions from various cultures into one.Most notably, Khwarizimi drew from Hindu mathematical texts to establish thenumber system we know and use today. Learn more about the history of math here[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRkNaF0QvnI].