this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
1123 points (97.8% liked)
Memes
45719 readers
1276 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
On the last point, a better comparison would be base 6 or base 14.
10 = 2 × 5
6 = 2 × 3
14 = 2 × 7
Or maybe a better way of thinking about it is the percentage of numbers that divide nicely in the base, as a percentage.
Base 10 has 2, 5, 10 = 30%
So maybe base 3 is the closest, at 33% of numbers being easily divisible.
Either way, 7 is a significantly worse base than 10.
Base-6 wouldn't be bad at all. "100" in base 6 is 36 in base 10. Their metricated unit circle would have three times as many "degree" divisions as we have hours on a clock.
Base 7 or 14 would require something akin to the sexagesimal abstraction layer we use to make base-10 play nice with angles.