Dear Bill, But base 12 numbers would be have no special place for areas where we need base 2 or base 16 numbers. In computing base 12 has no advantage over base 10.
Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia on 2002-12-11 07.28, Bill Potts at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 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] >
