Comment on CompSci freshmen can relate

• HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  nah just sign language

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• mr_satan@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Not sure how I would keep track of power of two with my fingers but base 6 or, my current favorite, base 13 counting is easy enough to keep track.

  In principle you use hands as digits, one hand representing ones the other “tens”. With base 6 you count with fingers normally up to 5 and then 6 is represented on another hand. This let’s you count to 35.

  Base 13 works by counting bones in your digits using your thumb. Like touching finger segment and that representing a number. So one hand can count up to 12 and then 13 is marked in the same manner on the other hand. This allows to count up to 168 (13 * 13 - 1).

  Utilizing all fingers in a binary manner could give 30 bit number (15 finger bones on each hand), but I have no idea how to then keep track of the number using your hands.

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  • HeurtisticAlgorithm9@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Powers of 2 is just counting in binary, finger up is a 1 and down is a 0 so highest you can count all the numbers up to and including is 1111111111 in binary or 1023 base 10

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    • Garbagio@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I think you could relatively easily go trinary, where a finger is either down, bent, or up. That would get you to 59048

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      • stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        What if I don’t wanna get shipped to El Salvador for throwing up gang signs?

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      • HeurtisticAlgorithm9@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        True!

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    • mr_satan@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Ok, yeah, a 10 bit number seems doable

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  • AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’m going to say something controversial. You could change your system to base 10, by simply stopping after 9 and using the other hand as the “tens”.

    This could be easier to see at a glance what number you are holding, it should become the industry standard

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    • mr_satan@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That’s already that I have with base 13, although, that does have more mental math.

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