Comment on Every base is base 10

ech@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• niartenyaw@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  we’d only be able to represent x with one digit though because what does base 15+1 mean? the 15 could be in any base higher than 5. the clearest way would probably be to just represent it with lines or something “base ||||||||||”

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  • ech@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s only 15 to us because we use base 10 (or 9+1). Like how we have 4 through 9, but that aliens in the picture only count up to 3.

    In the case of a mismatch, the culture using the higher base would just translate down (Base 21+1 in the given scenario).

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    • niartenyaw@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      that’s fair, translating down is a good idea

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  • harmsy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Base 16 is typically represented with letters being used as the extra numerals, so it would end up being F+1. Problem solved.

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    • Corngood@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Base 16

      Do you mean Base G?

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      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        All your base are belong to us

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      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        What the fuck is G?

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    • niartenyaw@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      what about numbers larger than 16?

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      • harmsy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        There are still 20 more letters that can be used as stand-ins. Things will get interesting if you try to go past Base 36, though.

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      • yetAnotherUser@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        We’ve got base 64, though it doesn’t quite follow the convention of starting with digits and following up with letters:

        en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64

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  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    wait until you find out about hex. It turns out we already have words for referring to numbers lol.

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    • niartenyaw@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      i know about hexadecimal, but what if you need to refer to a base larger than 16? i’m not saying it isn’t possible to create symbols for every number, i’m saying if you have to describe your base with more than one digit, you encounter a problem of not knowing what base that multi-digit number is in.

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      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        well no, i know, i’m just saying that’s it’s not really that big of a problem, unless you’re using octal, and you skill issue.

        You should design base systems to be independent of each other, and hex does a really good job at this, because often times it’s prepended with 0x to imply hex.

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• Mango@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I use base 8+1. What is 9?

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• gex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  What about Roman numerals?

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  • ech@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I think that would confuse things more than it would help. It’s base 5, unless it’s base 10, unless it’s base 50, etc. And then there’s the rules designating numbers 1 below certain other numbers, or 2 depending on the system being used. That’s a whole web of complications when communication is already murky.

    One glyph to one integer communicates the number system being used more clearly.

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