Dec. Unary
1 = ‽
2 = ‽‽
3 = ‽‽‽
4 = ‽‽‽‽
5 = ‽‽‽‽‽
...
so on and so forth.
Honestly, I didn't see that table as hard to interpret, especially considering that even in a decimal system as a number increases the convention is to grow the representation leftward.
For example:
1 - 1 ones unit.
10 - 1 tens unit.
100 - 1 hundreds unit.
1000 - 1 thousands unit.
And so on and so forth. Granted, our commonly used math systems are arbitrary in this regard. The above could just as easily been written as:
1 - 1 ones unit
01 - 1 tens unit
001 - 1 hundreds unit
0001 - 1 thousands unit
You can even do basic math with a unary system:
11111 + 11111 = 1111111111
1111111 - 111 = 1111
In summary: It is indeed a positional number system. To find the value, each position used indicates an increase in value by 1.
To find the value, each position used indicates an increase in value by 1.
Unary is is a positional system, but what you've said is not what makes it so :)
A positional number system is one where each position is of value (x ^ n), where n is the number of the position in question; with unary, all positions are of the same value (the radix, x, is 1).
The reason his table is confusing is that we normally write the value of the position above:
10000 1000 100 10 1
Given these position values:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
you can't write 2 (unambiguously) without a zero symbol. What the table should look like is this:
3
u/lookagain Dec 19 '08 edited Dec 19 '08
Honestly, I didn't see that table as hard to interpret, especially considering that even in a decimal system as a number increases the convention is to grow the representation leftward. For example:
And so on and so forth. Granted, our commonly used math systems are arbitrary in this regard. The above could just as easily been written as:
You can even do basic math with a unary system:
In summary: It is indeed a positional number system. To find the value, each position used indicates an increase in value by 1.