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> I once was an examiner in a mathematics competition in which some of
> the competitors wrote in Arabic. The mathematical formulae were
> written as Western mathematicians write them, and so were the numbers.
> When I made a remark to this effect to my Algerian colleague, he
> responded by asking me to add two ten-digit numbers that he had
> written down. Naturally I started at the unit as I was taught in
> primary school, and he stopped me right there. "Why do you start the
> addition at the right, if you do everthing else from left to right?" I
> replied "Because that's how the algorithm works." He then said: "But
> it's our algorithm.  An Arab mathematician invented it, and it starts
> at the right because we write numbers that way."
> 
> -- Dirk

So, if printing a billion digits of pi, you won't know how big pi
is until the last page ? (where the decimal point finally shown)

Going "Reverse Polish" on the numbers ...
Is this a joke ?