• kadu@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That explains why we have a decimal system is some cultures, yes. But that doesn’t make it mandatory nor unintuitive to use another base.

    There have been native tribes with wildly different counting system. Base 12 is surprisingly common, as you can use other features of your hand to count.

    Regardless, the fact that base 10 arises from the number of fingers doesn’t mean counting must be based on fingers, that’s not a logical conclusion.

    • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Base 12 is not organically common, it’s incredibly rare even with the modern counting systems we’ve discovered…

      The frequency of emergences (based on language families that use them) are: 4 ~1 time, 5 ~4 times, 6 ~3 times, 8 ~2 times, 10 ?? times, 12 ~3 times, 15 ~1 time, 20 ~9 times, 20+5 ~2 times, 23 ~1 time, 24 ~1 time, 27 ~1-2 times, 32 ~1 time, 60 ~2 times