Jim Elwell wrote: >Sorry, Marcus, but there is NOTHING magic about the number 10. If we had >grown up with 12 fingers, and had a numbering system based on 12 (e.g., >extracting from hexadecimal: 0, 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, >10, 11...), >it would appear every bit as "natural" as decimal does to us now. Our >brains would be very comfortable with it, and using an "odd" >number like 10 for a base would seem weird and uncomfortable.
Over the years, I've had several mathematician colleagues (usually with Masters degrees), who have all commented on the desirability of a base 12 system, because of its greater factoring flexibility. Of course, if we'd had 12 fingers and had adopted a base 12 system, we wouldn't call it something like duodecimal, simply because that term is based on the term "decimal," which itself is merely an artifact of the base 10 system. We might possibly now be referring to base 12 as decimal. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
