Re: More on number bases

Clint Jackson Baker writes:
 > Siyo!
 > I just remembered that there are some nomadic tribes
 > in Arabia(?) who count in base-12.  The way it
 > developed is that they used their thumbs to point to
 > the knuckles across the inside of their hands.  Each
 > of the four fingers has three segments, which makes
 > sense.
 >
 > My sister counts in between her fingers rather than on
 > her finger tips.  Odd...
 >
In octal?

Speaking of different ways of counting on the fingers, I have heard it
suggested that a base-11 system would be more "efficient".
Essintially, you can count one higher using the same number of
fingers, because under the present system we're effectively using a
digit (a literal digit) to represent 0, when we reach 10.  You could
instead count off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, then no fingers is 10
(denary 11), 11, 12, 13, etc.  Whether this is really useful, I'm not
sure.  Certainly I'd be reluctant to use a prime base higher than 3,
but this was actually offered as an advantage, for reasons I don't
recall.

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