On Monday 01 Aug 2011 1:36:32 AM BGB wrote: > if so, I guess the difference now would be that modern people tend to > have a different perspective WRT numbers, thinking more of linear spaces > with digit rollover (more like an odometer or similar), hence to the > modern mind the roman-numeral system seems far less sane. It is not that Roman numerals were insane ;-) but they served a specific purpose very well (e.g. tallying). Abaci or suanpans were machines that helped people tote up numbers in a flash. But coming up with higher notions like exponents (10^100) would have been very difficult in these systems. Notions and notations have to support each other.
>this being because at base-2, the rules are a bit more elegant, more >like logic ops, whereas at base 10 they are a little more arbitrary, and >base-16 builds directly on the base 2 rules. Exactly. Notice how the choice of hexadecimal or binary notations make it easier to think and deal with, say, switch settings or instruction decodes. Often patterns jump out at you. Subbu _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
