this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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With how common human-exposure to radiation is becoming, the primary base system might not be base-10 anymore. (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 1 year ago by TheSmartDude to c/showerthoughts
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[–] TheRealKuni 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hold your left thumb against the first segment of your left pinky and count 1, move up one segment, count two. Count each of the segments on your left fingers. You're now at 12. Move your right thumb to the first segment on your right pinky, and then start over on your left. Each time you count 12 on the left, move your right thumb up one. You can now count to 144 on your fingers.

(Note, this is not directly related to the base 12 conversation, I just like to share this method of counting whenever I can.)

I like your method a lot, it’s easier than binary with the fingers (which can get you to 1023 with both hands). But it is more work to understand for a base 10 brain than my current method:

One, two, three, four on your fingers of your right hand as usual, then drop all fingers and add the thumb for five. Then six, seven, eight, nine with the fingers.

Then drop all fingers and thumb, and add a finger on the other hand. That’s ten. Continue. You can get to 99 and very rapidly comprehend the value without any real work. Thumbs are 5s, fingers are 1s, one hand is the 1s column and the other hand is the 10s column.

[–] DharmaCurious 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like your method! I'm curious how to do binary? I only know the method I talked about because I really, really like base 12 for a story I wrote and got very into it with the research. I've never considered other techniques for finger counting before.

[–] TheRealKuni 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Binary is easy to count, but a pain to decipher unless you know binary very well.

Each finger and thumb is a single digit (literally!) and can either be a 0 or a 1. I start with the thumb on my right hand, but you can start however you’d like.

Thumb up for 1

Thumb down and index finger up for 10, which is 2 in base 10.

Index and thumb up for 11 (3)

Middle finger up, index and thumb down for 100 (4)

Middle and thumb up, index down for 101 (5)

Middle and index up, thumb down, for 110 (6)

All three up for 111 (7)

Ring finger up and all others down for 1000 (8)

Etc.

All ten up, 1111111111, is 1023.

If you need to count a large quantity but don’t need to be able to quickly decipher it, this is useful! But I almost never use it in favor of the easily-understood 0-99 counting.

[–] DharmaCurious 2 points 1 year ago

Wow! That's really cool!