As today, since we use the Arabic numerals, we count a 10 as a 1 with a 0 at the end. As 2 10's added together, we replace the 1 with a 2 because we have two 10's instead of one 10's and we add the 0 at the end.
This is the value of 10 summarized in slashes.
- - - - - - - - - -
I don't see anything significant or orderly about that.
Here is my question though, is there really anything special about 10's? Whose to say that the amount of 10 should be the time to add a zero at the end? What if it was a 5, and whenever you counted from 1 to 5, the number 5 would signal a new zero at the end, and the leading digit would revert back to 1. So a value of our 5 would equal a 10 my system, since the leading digit counts how many 5's there are. Or a value of our 10 would equal a 20 in my system. As we all know, the Roman's didn't see the value of 10 as a orderly number. Our tally marks don't see 10 as an orderly number, since we organize our tally marks by fives and whenever we need more space, we just make another tally mark. Whenever we see a crazy statistic for example, the world will end in 1,000,000 years, should we be shocked at the coincidence, or should we view it as another number?
Please correct me if i'm wrong, and if there is something behind those 10's.
:psyduck:
dude, you stoned?
I suspect the reason for its prevalence between cultures, and thus widespread use today, is from having 10 fingers.
Yeah, the reason is from people having 10 fingers
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;27886692]Yeah, the reason is from people having 10 fingers[/QUOTE]
That and its a doublke digit round even number.
Base 10 is arguably the simplest way of doing... Well, anything involving numbers, really.
OP, you're just speculating what would happen if base 10 was never invented and instead we were working with base 8 or 6 or whatever.
Hexadecimal is base 16 (1, 2, 3... 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f, 10, 11, ... 19, 1a, 1b...)
Binary is base 2 (0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000...)
[QUOTE=Voice of Reason;27886736]Base 10 is arguably the simplest way of doing... Well, anything involving numbers, really.
OP, you're just speculating what would happen if base 10 was never invented and instead we were working with base 8 or 6 or whatever.
Hexadecimal is base 16 (1, 2, 3... 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f, 10, 11, ... 19, 1a, 1b...)
Binary is base 2 (0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000...)[/QUOTE]
But the OP stealthraises a good point, what if we had 8 fingers instead of 10 and base 8 was the norm. Would it be awkward to use base 10 in some situations?
Because we have 10 digits on our hands.
[QUOTE=PacificV2;27886836]But the OP stealthraises a good point, what if we had 8 fingers instead of 10 and base 8 was the norm. Would it be awkward to use base 10 in some situations?[/QUOTE]
Likely as we'd be much more adept at counting (as well as performing other mathematical operations) in a different base than base 10, like base 8 from your example.
[QUOTE=PacificV2;27886836]But the OP stealthraises a good point, what if we had 8 fingers instead of 10 and base 8 was the norm. Would it be awkward to use base 10 in some situations?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, because we would use base 8 all the time, and using base 10 would be quite awkward
[editline]6th February 2011[/editline]
But who cares, really
[QUOTE=PacificV2;27886836]But the OP stealthraises a good point, what if we had 8 fingers instead of 10 and base 8 was the norm. Would it be awkward to use base 10 in some situations?[/QUOTE]
I've been trying to think about that but I keep getting confused. Would it mean that the numbers 8 and 9 wouldn't exist? Yes, because 1, 2, .. 6, 7, 10 (in base 8), but would it have to in certain situations? If we did use base 10 in a base 8 world, would we count 1, 2, .. 6, 7, a, b, 10? Theoretically, because in this base 10's world base 16, we count 8, 9, a, b.
Interesting thing to think about.
P.S. OP couldn't you have waited 12 hours to post this
it hurts to think about at midnight
[QUOTE=Voice of Reason;27886886]I've been trying to think about that but I keep getting confused. Would it mean that the numbers 8 and 9 wouldn't exist? Yes, because 1, 2, .. 6, 7, 10 (in base 8), but would it have to in certain situations? If we did use base 10 in a base 8 world, would we count 1, 2, .. 6, 7, a, b, 10? Theoretically, because in this base 10's world base 16, we count 8, 9, a, b.
Interesting thing to think about.
P.S. OP couldn't you have waited 12 hours to post this
it hurts to think about at midnight[/QUOTE]
It would go to like this :
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, ...
So 8 = 10; 9 = 11, 10 = 12
[QUOTE=Voice of Reason;27886886]I've been trying to think about that but I keep getting confused. Would it mean that the numbers 8 and 9 wouldn't exist? Yes, because 1, 2, .. 6, 7, 10 (in base 8), but would it have to in certain situations? If we did use base 10 in a base 8 world, would we count 1, 2, .. 6, 7, a, b, 10? Theoretically, because in this base 10's world base 16, we count 8, 9, a, b.
Interesting thing to think about.
P.S. OP couldn't you have waited 12 hours to post this
it hurts to think about at midnight[/QUOTE]
All numerals 0-9 were created to represent numeric values, when they were conceived, the idea of "ten" was what sort of spawned the creation of those symbols. Had we only had eight, I doubt that 9 would have any significance aside from being some alien symbol to us.
I just realized that most if not all of the world uses base 10 for counting, imagine how fucked up communication could get if there was not only a language barrier, but a numeric barrier. Heads would roll.
And what the hell would we call "69" if 9 didn't exist?
[QUOTE=Psychopath12;27886966]And what the hell would we call "69" if 9 didn't exist?[/QUOTE]
1000101
There have actually been a lot of cultures in the past that have used a different base. The Babylonians used base 60.
[QUOTE=PacificV2;27886836]But the OP stealthraises a good point, what if we had 8 fingers instead of 10 and base 8 was the norm. Would it be awkward to use base 10 in some situations?[/QUOTE]
How about just keeping it to base 8 was the norm. The amount of fingers may have lead most cultures to the base 10 system, but if for whatever reason most cultures went with another base then it really wouldn't matter. It would of course be awkward because it isn't something you are familiar with. I've done a lot of work with binary and working in base 2 and base 16 is almost as natural as base 10 for me. I'm most comfortable in base 10 of course, but that is simply because I spent my whole life using it.
[editline]6th February 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Voice of Reason;27886886]I've been trying to think about that but I keep getting confused. Would it mean that the numbers 8 and 9 wouldn't exist? Yes, because 1, 2, .. 6, 7, 10 (in base 8), but would it have to in certain situations? If we did use base 10 in a base 8 world, would we count 1, 2, .. 6, 7, a, b, 10? Theoretically, because in this base 10's world base 16, we count 8, 9, a, b.[/QUOTE]
The convention is to use letters because the order of it is common knowledge. Your assumption is right because of this. We could have gone with other symbols, but it makes the most sense to go with the alphabet and that rationality is independent from the base being used. It'd be a different situation if the alphabet only had 3 letters in it though.
It's best to just think of numbers as symbols with a more specific use. Unlike a lot of symbols, we don't see them used much beyond their representation of numbers. With letters we see that they can be used to make words, and they can also be used to represent numbers. Also, letters are often used to represent variables. When we see y = 2x we don't see a y and x as letters, but instead we see them as variables. We use letters from the alphabet because they are most convenient. The symbols we use to represent numbers are often used for other things because it is far more likely to get confusing.
Do you mean like this....1 2 3 4 5 11 12 13 14 15 21 22 23 24 25 31 32 33 34 35 41 42 43 44 45 51 52 53 54 55 111 112 113 114 115 121 122 123 124 125...and so on??
[QUOTE=Stickguy7;27887249]Do you mean like this....1 2 3 4 5 11 12 13 14 15 21 22 23 24 25 31 32 33 34 35 41 42 43 44 45 51 52 53 54 55 111 112 113 114 115 121 122 123 124 125...and so on??[/QUOTE]
Yeah.
EDIT:
No that's wrong, you're counting the 5. In my system there is no 5, only a 10.
[QUOTE=Cookieeater;27887277]Yeah.
EDIT:
No that's wrong, you're counting the 5. In my system there is no 5, only a 10.[/QUOTE]
Oh...Okay I think i now know what he is talking about has anyone ever heard of equations(that game you play in school) because their is a rule in the game where if it is used, it would change the counting system. so 14 in base 12 would actually be 12...i think.
14 in base 12 is 16. You go 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,10,11,12,13,14. 16 numbers.
[QUOTE=Cookieeater;27887277]Yeah.
EDIT:
No that's wrong, you're counting the 5. In my system there is no 5, only a 10.[/QUOTE]
In that case you are using base 1 and the 10 would be treated as a single symbol. 01 wouldn't be a number just as a ε in our current base 10 system isn't a number. So.in your system
= 0 in base 10
1010 = 2 in base ten
1010101010 = 5 in base ten
10101001 = not a number as the 01 would be seen as a foreign symbol. 01 could be used to represent whatever we wanted.
I don't believe you really get numbering systems so I suggest you do some research because you aren't at all making sense.
For those who don't understand how different bases work, play around with this:
[url]http://www.unitconverter.org/numbers-conversion-chart.html[/url]
That site was a godsend when I had to verify binary output from one of my C assignments :v:
2 cents: Octal is pretty cool, it doesn't require any extra symbols and it's really easy to represent in hex and binary
I remember reading that one civilization back in the day used base 60
Found it: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals[/url]
I prefer base 1.
00000 = 5
Roman numbers were awesome. They used letters instead of numbers, so 2011 is MMXI
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;27888029]Roman numbers were awesome. They used letters instead of numbers, so 2011 is MMXI[/QUOTE]
Still has flaws.
Also a lot of the earliest number systems used binary, kinda.
[quote=collin665;27888091]try writing large numbers with that (i.e. One-million)[/quote]
m * m
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;27888107]m * m[/QUOTE]
It's actually M with a bar over it which indicates to multiply the number by 1000.
[QUOTE=TrouserDemon;27886678]I suspect the reason for its prevalence between cultures, and thus widespread use today, is from having 10 fingers.[/QUOTE]
Agreed, this is the obvious reason. People counted with their fingers way before there were any number systems.
10010101000100101010101101010101111001101010
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