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Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Apprentice and Hex keys
On 11/01/2019 22:21, wrote:
On Friday, 11 January 2019 13:24:41 UTC, NY wrote:
"bert" wrote in message
...
I read an article recently arguing that base 12 would be better than 10
because it has more factors.
Definitely. If we'd been born with 12 digits, we'd have learned to count in
base 12, and we'd have invented two extra symbols for what in base 10 we
write as 11 and 12. I can do base 16 arithmetic more easily than base 12,
and that's partly because there's only ever one digit (numeric or letter) in
each column.
Decimal is trivial to divide by 2 or 5. Base 12 is trivial to divide by 6, 4, 3, 2. And that's why humans have used base 12 so much. Nothing to do with number of digits, it's not as if counting to 12 presents any difficulty to anyone.
It does if you count on your fingers.
--
Max Demian
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