Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-23 Thread Max Battcher
Steve Sloan wrote: Not if you routinely have to divide numbers into thirds or sixths, something that's not too uncommon in the real world. Thirds and sixths are pretty common in nature. 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, a much better list of factors than the puny 2 and 5 you get with

Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-23 Thread Dave Land
On Dec 23, 2005, at 12:01 AM, Max Battcher wrote: and all the more ridiculous for your religious ranting and racism. I didn't see either of those things in Robert's post. Covert in post, overt in referenced website of poster. Isn't it just as likely that it was merely _implicit_ in

Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-22 Thread Robert J. Chassell
How were numbers, such as 45, spoken in Italy, Germany, and Spain in 1200 AD? I am curious, because of my fury that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It

Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-22 Thread Max Battcher
Robert J. Chassell wrote: I am curious, because of my fury that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It fits the number of eggs in dozen. In base 12, you can

Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-22 Thread Dave Land
On Dec 22, 2005, at 11:21 AM, Max Battcher wrote: Robert J. Chassell wrote: I am curious, because of my fury that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It

Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-22 Thread Ronn!Blankenship
At 01:21 PM Thursday 12/22/2005, Max Battcher wrote: Robert J. Chassell wrote: I am curious, because of my fury that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It

Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD

2005-12-22 Thread Steve Sloan
Max Battcher wrote: As a person who has had to work across radixes it is much easier to deal with radixes that are powers of two (binary, base 4, octal, hexadecimal) than any other arbitrary base. There's a reason computers use binary or unary. They make significantly more sense than base