this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
2883 points (97.0% liked)
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
7122 readers
1 users here now
A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Every time anyone talks about this, I feel obligated to inform them: there's also a counting system that's not based on ten, and it's way superior. Do people know about it? Most don't. The Wikipedia page stupidly calls it the "ten-plus-two" system, and there have been heated arguments there with the dumbasses who refuse to change it to the logical name. That's how stupidly-biased people are towards the ten-based system.
You make a "metric" measurement system based on 12-based counting and then everyone wins. Everyone. It'll never happen of course.
You’re not really helping your case by omitting the real name (but complaining about the Wikipedia name) and sharing why it’s superior.
I loosely tried to find it and didn’t find anything explicitly named 10+2 or “ten-plus-two”.
Wikipedia seems to be pretty clear about the naming. You must be fun at parties!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal
Sumerians picked base 60, which is the minimum common multiple of "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6", which is far superior to either 10 (MCM of only "1, 2, 5"), or 12 (MCM of "1, 2, 3, 4").
But the average people had trouble counting to 60, so they used their fingers... which happen to be 10, which happens to be 1/6 of 60... and they called it "good enough".
We still use base 60 for minutes and seconds, base 6*60 (360) for angular degrees, and base 2*12 (24) for hours... which is at least something.
Base 60 isn't superior or even reasonable for human mathematical operations. It's not like 5 is as important of a number as 6. If we all had 6 fingers, 5 would be treated in the same way that 7 is.
Base 60 is both superior and reasonable: it's easily divisible by the first 6 integers. There is a reason we still use it all the time (pun intended).
Base 420 would be the next one, if human brains didn't struggle with holding 7 separate items at once in short term operative memory.
420 lol !trees@somewhere.lemmy
I don't think you understand. You want a small base if you want to do everyday human operations. I guess it might be hard for a lot of people to comprehend because you're so used to thinking in tens, that you don't realize that if you stopped dividing 60 by 10 automatically, "60" would not be a digestible base number.
Furthermore, "using 60 a lot" is not the same as counting base-60. Base-60 means there is no ten to fall back on. 60 would be your "small group" number, and that would be that.
Let's say I counted: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y 10 11 12 13...
2*u=10, u0/3=a0, A/7=5
No need to "divide by 10", and we even have enough symbols already. All it would take is getting used to... just like what we did for years over and over in primary.
For "everyday human operations" you can just count: 0 5 a f k p u A F K P U 10... or 0 6 c i o u B H N T 10... or 0 a k u A K U 10... or 0 c o B N 10... or 0 f K 10... and so on. Notice how division by any multiple of 2, 3, 5, becomes much easier:
1/2=0.u, 1/3=0.f, 1/4=0.k, 1/5=0.c, 1/60=0.0a
Look at what happens with fractions:
2/3=0.K, 3/5=0.B, 5/12=0.p
-facepalm-
"Not learning your base 60 division tables... paddle to the face"
Going back all the way to your original comment. Counting to 60 is not the same as counting base-60, unlike this comment and a ton of your replies. 60 minutes in an hour isn't base-60 counting. Unless you write one sixty as "10" and two sixties as "20", you are not counting base-60. Because the tens digit means one group— no matter the size— and the zero after it means none extra. For the love of god please read a book.