Why is the number of greatest magnitude on the left?
pseingatl: But it didn't "start" that way. It came to us not from the Hindus, but from the Arabs, through Al-Andalus and the cultural exchanges at Córdoba and Toledo. The Arabs read right to left, so the most significant digit is at the end, not the beginning of the number. At the time Arabic numbers were adopted in the West, we were ignorant of the Hindu practice.