Re: Numbers from 1-10

There are some websites which answer your questions better than I can, but
briefly the utility of a base is directly proportional to the number of
integer factors of that base and inversely proportional to their size.

You will notice that ten can be divided by one two and five,(three factors)
but twelve can be divided exactly by one, two, three, four and six (five
factors)and indeed although five and seven don't divide twelve exactly,
they do divide to produce a non recurring fraction in base twelve. Note
that to write 1/3 or 2/3 as a decimal you get a recurring fraction.

Base twenty seems to have been used in many different counting systems and
seems to have been carried into a number of languages. I supose that it is
only with the advent of Arabic numerals that any languages truely became
base ten as it forses the use of a rigid place value.

Anyway, the websites are:

http://www.dsgb.orbix.co.uk
for why base twelve is better than base ten

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/vigesimal
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/62224.html

I suppose that "Planck units" are closely linked to this topic in that if
you want to change the numbers then you might as well change units of
mesurement with them. A good website for Planck units is the center for
natural units.

http://www.planck.com

Andrew Patterson.

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