this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you've just got halves and fifths.
Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.
I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.
Wait until you find out that binary counting allows you to count to 31 with one hand.
tries it
Whoa. Dude that's super useful.
I'm trying to think of a situation where I need to count to 12 on one hand 🤔
This would be useful if I was used to counting with base 12.
When ordering twelve beers
Pros scale that up to base 60 by counting to 12 and using the other hand to count how many times they have counted to 12.
Thems rookie numbers. You can get to 144 using the twelve segments on each hand.
That is so cool! Thanks for the tip
Yeah, I know all about that, but I don't think we'll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let's go with a base 10 clock.
A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.
Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we're fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal's head.
I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?
I see what you did there and it’s very funny.