Roman Numerals

In Roman times, numbers were represented using letters. The way of doing this, known as Roman Numerals, is often seen depicting the copyright date on films and television.

Roman numerals are conventionally defined to represent numbers using seven letters: I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, D=500 and M=1000. Numbers other than these are formed by placing letters together from left to right, in descending order of size, and adding their values. The basic rule is to always use the biggest numeral possible (e.g. 15 is represented as XV, but never as VVV, VX or XIIIII).

Letters may not appear more than three times in a row, so there are six exceptions to these rules - the combinations IV, IX, XL, XC, CD and CM. In these cases a letter is placed before one of greater value, and the smaller value is subtracted from the larger, e.g. CD = 400.

Examples:

				26    XXVI
				94    XCIV
				555   DLV
				1998  MCMXCVIII
  • Sample run:
    1999 MCMXCIX
  • Some Roman numerals have fewer characters than the number of digits in the number they represent, e.g. C (1 character) compared with 100 (3 digits). Similarly some have more characters (e.g. XXIV and 24), and some have the same length (e.g. V and 5). How many of the numbers from 1 to 3999 inclusive have fewer characters in their Roman numeral form, and how many have more?