Comment on CompSci freshmen can relate
mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 days agoNot 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.
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
That’s already that I have with base 13, although, that does have more mental math.
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
Garbagio@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I think you could relatively easily go trinary, where a finger is either down, bent, or up. That would get you to 59048
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
What if I don’t wanna get shipped to El Salvador for throwing up gang signs?
Garbagio@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Idk don’t math debate in public?
HeurtisticAlgorithm9@feddit.uk 1 day ago
True!
mr_satan@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Ok, yeah, a 10 bit number seems doable