29 May
2010
29 May
'10
10:30 a.m.
On 29 May 2010 at 7:28, dwight elvey wrote:
Except it doesn't _really_ make sense for counting on your fingers
either.
Start off with all fingers down (that's 0). Now put them up one after the
other, counting to 10. Now, the next state is surely all fingers down,
and 1 carried to the next person. Which means base 11 is actiually more
natural. If you use base 10, then 10 has 2 represenations (all fingers on
1st person up, or all fintgers on 1st person down, with one carried to
the next person). If you want to count on one hand at a time, then base
6 works quite nicely (and has the advantage of being a reasonably
Thing in the physical world are fraction of
powers of fractions.
Decimal is just what you learned in school.
Exactly so! 10 in the natural scheme of things, other than being a
notational convenience for people using base ten is not terribly
useful other than being able to count on your fingers (the Mayans,
with their base twenty system, evidently used their toes as well). Does anyone still make a calculator that works in
fractions (ratios)
instead of decimals? There used to be one, mostly intended for
carpenters.
Based on the behaviour of its predecessor, I think the HP50g does (and it
hadnles them exactly, not as decimal approxiamtions which are converted
back to fractions fo the display).
-tony