/wildcard/ - (STEM)

I always thought highly composite numbers would make more useful bases than 10 (or even 16), but I wonder if that's where the historical fascination with twelve comes from.

A lot of things seem coincidental, like the number of months in the year representing the moon going through 12 phases, or close enough. (since it's slightly more I guess every few years there would actually be 13 full moons, maybe that's where the superstition comes from).

But then you have music, where 12 notes make up almost every tune we ever hear, so surely there must be some mathematical significance there. I know a lot of people claim this is arbitrary and only sounds 'right' to us because we've been conditioned to it, but from the amount of time I spent as a kid trying to play tunes on touch-tone keypads I don't really think it's a matter of exposure.

Twelve pairs of ribs.

Also, upside down 2 and 3 looks very stupid, why not use A and B letters like in hexadecimal system?

Dozenal system is definately better for humans then, say, octal and hexadecimal systems. I also heard there are computational advantages too if you use it in electronics.

There is also a trick in base 12 - you can count full base only with one hand. Just move thumb along finger bones. 4 fingers, 3 bones each. Smart isn't it?
>>77
Somewhat agree. Deodecimal society developped it, but they try to hard to fit it in decimal system. Representing 12 with 10 is counter-intuitive and cause a lot of confusion. It should be 123456789AB, in my opinion.

>>77
if you squint they kinda look like a curly 'T' and 'E' which makes them easy to remember by name I suppose. It does look stupid but then 9 is already an upside down 6.

>>78
How else can you represent twelve in base twelve, unless you replace the symbol 1 or 0?

>>79
If the added upside-down 2 and 3, which has no relation logically to decimal 2 or 3, nothing stops them from making a twelve be another arbitrary symbol. Ten is too confusing. I would really advise using letter or derive completely new symbols.

>>78
>There is also a trick in base 12 - you can count full base only with one hand
Using binary you can count to 31 on one hand. 1023 on two hands.

>>80
I think you may be confused about how base systems work.
If your collection of glyphs starts with '0','1',etc… than the first number one order of magnitude higher will always be '10'.
For the confusion reason though, I'd say use pic related glyphs.

>>81
What they really need is a way to indicate the different place value of the '1' in '10', maybe by adding some sort of dot or underline. But then for consistency you'd probably need two for 100 (144), three for 1000 (1728) etc.

>>81
>using binary you can count to 31 on one hand. 1023 on two hands.
How?

I understand that in 10 it means "one whole measure, and zero remains". Maybe they should develop system where 0-11 are new symbols, while a 12 will be second and first. Can we print zodiacs like you suggested? Is there unicode support?

>>83
>How?
You can show any number from those ranges by using each finger as 0 or 1. Not sure if it can be used for counting as it's hard to bend fingers like that.
>Maybe they should develop system where 0-11 are new symbols, while a 12 will be second and first
Why? There isn't anything wrong, besides that they are mocking Arabic numerals like some kind of thelemites when they could just use first letters of Latin alphabet like everybody else does for any other number representation with base greater than 10.
>Can we print zodiacs like you suggested?
Yes we can (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/So/list.htm), but I think his suggestion was sarcastic.

>>83
>How?
Counting from 0 to 31 and back to 0:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkIQY3IwiNg
Also a wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary
Point of confusion though; vid related uses the pinky as the least significant didget. The more common notation is to use the thumb as the least significant didget. idk why. I find my thumb more annoying to move from '0' to '1' quickly.

>unicode support
How from aries to count to taurus aries:
0 = ♈, 1 = ♉, 2 = ♊, 3 = ♋, 4 = ♌, 5 = ♍,
6 = ♎, 7 = ♏, 8 = ♐, 9 = ♑, 10 = ♒, 11 = ♓,
12 = ♉♈

>>84
I don't know about sarcastic. Maybe just tounge in cheek.