Re: Other bases was Re: Numbers from 1-10

Staving Andrew Patterson:
>Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...> wrote:
>
>My now-forgotten source explained that the speakers of this language did
>not count on their fingers, as many other cultures do.  Instead, they
>counted using the spaces between their fingers -- hence, base eight.
>
>Interesting, the dozenal society of Great Britain suggests counting on the
>joints of the fingers of one hand using the thumb to count in base twelve.

I think it was Bertrand Russel who suggested that the Lord had intended
mankind to use octal, and that we had made the mistake of using our thumbs,
despite His best efforts to differentiate them from the rest of our fingers
and thus save the race from this error.

Pete