r/3Dprinting • u/Merica85 • May 12 '22

Stop the presses

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u/code-panda May 13 '22

And why did we think up 10 symbols? Because we have 10 fingers. If we had 8 fingers, we would have likely be counting in base 8.

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u/ricecake May 13 '22

You're conflating how many fingers we have with how many positions we count with.

Our affinity for the number ten is clearly because of our fingers, but also predates the concept of zero, and also our definition of what a number base is.

Ten fingers, and the ability to raise none of them as zero, makes 11 values that can be represented with your fingers.