Akshully, though…
The thing with base 60 is that 60 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Also, notably, 12. And 10.
It’s pretty trivial to divide anything in base 10 by either 2 or by 5, right? That’s specifically because 10 is divisible by 2 and 5.
But try to divide some nice round number like 10 by 3 and you can’t even represent that in decimal without stating that “oh, and by the way, these threes go on forever.”
Ever wonder why so many things come in dozens? It’s largely because 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, and 4.
10, though? When was the last time you needed to divide things evenly by five? It’s so much more common to want to divide by 3.
So in short, base 60 honestly has some significant benefits over base 10.
But, really, haha “sex”, am I right?
Now invent 60 unique digits
Having a base too big or too small has a lot of problems that i havent seen talked about
You’re not wrong, but…
The arabic numererals we use in our primary base-10 system are very arbitrary. There’s no connection between the around-a-tree-around-a-tree numeral “3” we use to represent the number after the candy-cane-with-a-shoe numeral “2” and the concept of the number 3.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if the numerals in our base-60 system themselves followed a pattern.
One of the simpler and more straightforward ways of doing that (that might not work well in practice, at least not for hand-written numerals) would be just to make each numeral in our base-60 system be a vertical line of 6 marks, each either a dot or a dash. We could use that then to encode a single digit in our base-60 system using base-2 digits.
For instance:
. . . _ . . _ _ . .Would be
(1*2^1)*60^1+(1*2^3+1*2^1)*60^0 = 2*60^1+10*60^0 = 120+10 = 130.Viola! Base-60 with (handwave, mutter, qualify) only 2 numerals!
There are downsides to this as well. For instance, you’d have to not consider certain patterns valid. Six base-2 digits can encode numbers up to 63, so you’d just have to throw away the last four and say you’re not allowed to put a 60, 61, 62, or 63 in a single digit. (Also, we’d need language to differentiate between the base-2 digits and the base-60 digits in the same exact number system.)
Not the only way it could be approached, but it’s an option.
Digits should be unique enough to be distinguishable with bad writing and not require you to count dots
me not realising this was a “haha sex” joke because base 60 is actually my favourite base because of these properties
we already use this base for measuring time and angles btw, the numbers are written in base 10 but it’s actually base 60
Well yeah, that’s why we’re still telling time in Babylonian standard base 60. Also you can count to 60 on your fingers if you use finger segments. Really base 10 is some stupid shit. Honestly.
Base 10 any day over:
“What wrench did you need? 3/8?
How far away was it? 200yds?
How much material did you want to take off? 10-thou?”lol (help me)
Thou? I smell a machinist.
Hi!
Using base 2 you can count to 1024 without using finger segments.
For anyone wondering how to count to 60 on your hands: 12 segments on your fingers, 2 on your thumb and your palm makes 15 per side of each hand. Repeat for each side of each hand
Alternatively, you can count to 6 on each digit be counting joints and segments, sostart with the joint with the palm (knuckle), then the first segment, next joint, and so on. The thumb is a little odd because the knuckle joint is near the wrist, but you can still count it.
Using binary (finger up vs. finger down) lets you count from 0 to 1023 though.
And try not to think about polar bears.
I love comments like this that dive in and share knowledge or cool shit and then end with a meme or reference.
Berry nice
Zapp vibes:
