• bouh@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Base 10 is the most easy to scale, you just move the coma and add 0s. Base 12 doesn’t allow that easily

    • DrQuint@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      A base 12 number system would have two extra symbols. Twelve would be written 10 and be called ten, and the number 144 would be written 100 and be called one hundred.

      Everything you may think is inherent to base 10 is largely not. The quirky rules of 9’s multiplication table would apply to 11’s. Pi and e would still be irrational, and continue being no no matter which base of N you choose. Long division would work the same. Etc.

      • Killing_Spark@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yep. In computer science you sometimes need to calculate with hexadecimal numbers where 10-15 are the letters A-F. You just use another factor for scaling “easily”.

        In hexadecimal 10 is 16 in decimal. So if you do C * 10 it’s C0 but that is 192 in decimal (12 * 16, remember the base is 16).

        Whats cool though is that (all hexadecimal):

        10 / 2 = 8

        10 is 2 to the power of 4 which means 10 is divisible by 2 4 times.

        Similarly (and arguably even cooler) with a base 12 system 10 is divisible by 2 AND 3!

        10 / 3 = 4
        10 / 2 = 6