alternative base number systems

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

so other than the simple base 10 number system or decimal what do you think would be superior to base 10?

 

base 12 looks promising but I want to hear your thoughts

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

Huge fan of hexadecimal. Binary is neat, but it gets old fast, base 60 is superior, if difficult to use.

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

7 hours ago, Lego Mistborn said:

Huge fan of hexadecimal. Binary is neat, but it gets old fast, base 60 is superior, if difficult to use.

does base 9 have any cool perks?

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

7 minutes ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

does base 9 have any cool perks?

It makes dividing by three easier. But so does base twelve, and base nine makes pretty much everything else harder. 

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

Yeah, ideally we want our base to be the LCM of the largest possible set, while still remaining small enough to be usable. base-12 does a great job of this compared to decimal since it is the LCM of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. 60 is a multiple of 12 and it's factors, but also of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 60.

Binary's main utility is with electricity based computing, where there's an on and off state.. Same goes for base-16, it's only a multiple of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16, but two digits are equivalent to 1 byte (8 binary bits or digits) of data, which makes it convenient for CS people.

MB

Spoiler

It's also what the Scadrians might be using as a number system.

Some people like octal for CS stuff too, but I despise it since you can't split a byte into octal very easily.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

I've been wanting to worldbuild a culture with a base 16 number system for a while.

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

12 hours ago, Dragonheir said:

It makes dividing by three easier. But so does base twelve, and base nine makes pretty much everything else harder. 

Shoot. I have to make a poster for math class about how awesome base 9 is…  

4 hours ago, The Bookwyrm said:

I've been wanting to worldbuild a culture with a base 16 number system for a while.

Personally I’ve been wanting to world build base 6

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Just now, RoyalBeeMage said:

Shoot. I have to make a poster for math class about how awesome base 9 is…  

Uh oh. It’s essentially just more complicated but compact base three. Did you pick base nine, or was it assigned? I’m sure there’s something it can be used for. Square roots of some sort, perhaps? 

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

2 minutes ago, Dragonheir said:

Uh oh. It’s essentially just more complicated but compact base three. Did you pick base nine, or was it assigned? I’m sure there’s something it can be used for. Square roots of some sort, perhaps? 

Randomly assigned using 2D6 every one has a different one.

I’ll find some use for it I’m sure 

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

Just now, RoyalBeeMage said:

Randomly assigned using 2D6 every one has a different one.

I’ll find some use for it I’m sure 

Ok. I wish you good luck. 

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

Just now, Dragonheir said:

Ok. I wish you good luck. 

Thanks! I’ll keep you posted about what I find out 

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

Certain systems use trinary(+/-/0) instead of binary. Definitely look into those and how nonary is used to compact those numbers. Compare it to octal.

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

39 minutes ago, Lego Mistborn said:

Certain systems use trinary(+/-/0) instead of binary. Definitely look into those and how nonary is used to compact those numbers. Compare it to octal.

thank you! i will definitly have a look at that!

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

On 8/29/2024 at 2:30 PM, The Bookwyrm said:

I've been wanting to worldbuild a culture with a base 16 number system for a while.

Hehe… you should put all the numbers in base 16 but don’t use any with letters. Just to throw people off.

“I had 100 of those” would be “I had 256 of those”

Edited October 5, 2024 by SpiritOfWrath
Stupid autocorrect

[strmblsd he/him]

base 64 and 16 and 65,536 are used in Minecraft