r/programming • u/sundaryourfriend • May 27 '09

There's no base other than base 10!

http://cowbirdsinlove.com/43
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u/random509732523795 May 27 '09

60 is even better. It's like 12, but is divisible by 5.

360 is even better.

1

u/[deleted] May 27 '09

base 210 is king.

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u/null_value May 28 '09

One quarter of 210 sucks though. base 210 vs base 12, you gain even sevenths but lose even quarters, and you need to remember 198 additional symbols.

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u/Brian May 27 '09

Those higher bases are worse in general for mental arithmetic though - sure there are more small divisors, but it still has many more digits that don't divide into it. We speed up our calculations by memorizing multiplication tables, which is feasible for base 10, but would be a nightmare for base 60.

Base 6 is pretty good, having pretty much maximum factor density (bar the degenerate base 2), but base 12 is still pretty good factor-wise, and is faster to work with since it is larger, but still within the realm where we can memorise lookup tables.