I use base 8+1. What is 9?
Comment on Every base is base 10
ech@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Huh, that’s a good point. A better universal naming system would be something like “Base x+1”, with x being one integer lower than 10. So humans would use Base 9+1, and the alien would use Base 3+1.
Mango@lemmy.world 6 months ago
gex@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What about Roman numerals?
ech@lemm.ee 6 months 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.
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 months 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 ||||||||||”
ech@lemm.ee 6 months 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).
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 months ago
that’s fair, translating down is a good idea
harmsy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Base 16 is typically represented with letters being used as the extra numerals, so it would end up being F+1. Problem solved.
Corngood@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Do you mean Base G?
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 6 months ago
All your base are belong to us
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
What the fuck is G?
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 months ago
what about numbers larger than 16?
harmsy@lemmy.world 6 months 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.
yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 6 months 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
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
wait until you find out about hex. It turns out we already have words for referring to numbers lol.
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 months 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.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months 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.