Dear John, If only we all had 1920 fingers on each hand!
Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia on 2002-12-11 10.52, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 2002-12-10 > > What is interesting, is if we had been brought up with base 12 instead of > base 10, computer people would still have to use base 16. Base 12 would not > prevent the use of having to have a different base for computers then what > would be normally used for human functions. > > I wonder if a universal base exists that would have the factors of base 12 > (24, 36, 48, 60, etc.) and also be practical with computers, which work with > powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc.). I tried to figure it out, but > started out with 1 equation and 2 unknowns. 12x=2^n. I got as far as > solving for n, which came out to be: n = 1 + (Log x/Log 2). I guess it > doesn't matter as the base would be too large to be practical. > > John > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Bill Potts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Tuesday, 2002-12-10 15:28 > Subject: [USMA:23887] Re: Measure of all things > > >> 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] >> >
