Before we proceed any further, I warn readers that this post contains that most dreaded of subjects... maths.
Consider this:
Now if man had been born with 6 fingers on each hand, he'd probably count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, dec, el, do. "Dec" and "El" being two entirely new signs meaning ten and eleven. Single digits! And his twelve, "do", would be written 1-0. Get it? That'd be swell, for multiplying by 12.
The base-10 system has been used by just about every modern civilisation as well as the Ancient Chinese, Roman and Greeks. Even the Babylonians who used base-60, still used the number 10 as a sub-base of their numerical system. The choice of 10 whilst perhaps obvious because we have ten digits, isn't perhaps the best system.
In thinking about the idea proposed by the video above it struck me that base-12 is intrinsically a better system on the basis that 10 is only divisible by 10, 5, 2 and 1, whereas as 12 is a more complex number and is divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
By having a base with more factors, it doesn't necessarily become easier to perform mathematical operations but it does mean there are more repeating cycles within the system.
All of the multiples of 2, 3, 4 and 6 resolve themselves into repeating patterns, even multiples of 8 and 10 do (and obviously 12):
2 - 2, 4, 6, 8, X, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 1X, 20
3 - 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 19, 20, 23, 26, 29, 30
4 - 4, 8, 10, 14, 18, 20, 24, 28, 30, 34, 38, 40
6 - 6, 10, 16, 20, 26, 30, 36, 40, 46, 50, 56, 60
8 - 8, 14, 20, 28, 34, 40, 48, 54, 60, 68, 74, 80
X - X, 18, 26, 34, 42, 50, 5X, 68, 76, 84, 92, X0
10 - 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, X0, E0, 100
Of course it does provide some unexpected results, like 7x5=2E and ExE=X1 which looks totally unfamiliar to us in our base-10 world.
But the idea isn't silly. The British Empire survived quite happiliy using the Pounds, Shillings, Pence system which had 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound; this produced a pound which equalled 240 pence. 240 is divisible by a whole slew of factors and a price of £5/14/11 suddenly doesn't look quite so strange anymore.
If you are prepared do look into this further and develop your own set of multiplication tables then there are even odder results. Apart from 3, there are no numbers ending in 3 which are prime. There are no at all numbers ending in 9 which are prime, and as with base-10 because base-12 has an even base, there are no even primes apart from 2.
All this is theory though.
If we were to apply this to the real world, then people would retire at 55 and the average life expectancy would be 70 in Australia. I would be 28 years old and would have been born in the year 1189, the date today would be 20-9-11E6 and the new millenium would still be X05 years away.
There would only be 50 minutes in an hour, midday would be 10pm and 5pm would be 1500 in 20 hour time. Trains would probably still run 13 minutes late, and the current price of a Big Mac at $4.50 assuming that cents remained the same would be $3.16, however I'd expect that they'd still find someway of ripping us off.
This does mean of course that the romance of Spinal Tap's amps going up all the way to E is somewhat removed though... but if our amps went all the way up to 11, that's two more than E... er eleven.
1 comment:
I'd be 11, born in 11X9, and there would be... you know... stars that are only 16 years old. The oldest living person would only be 99 (and born in 1122). Next century will be next year. We'll say "2E0" and laugh at "59".
Post a Comment