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Re: OT: Number bases (WAS: Constructed Computer Architectures (Concomps?))

From:Alex Fink <000024@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 5:54
On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 21:38:28 -0800, Rebecca Bettencourt <beckiergb@...>
wrote:

>I've also heard of a base 2i that avoids the arbitrariness of >representing complex numbers. It was proposed by Donald Knuth in 1955, >apparently. >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater-imaginary_base
Why stop there? 2i is a square in the Gaussian integers, and you get an even sleeker representation by going to its square root, base -1-i, and only using digits 0 and 1. (Not base 1+i, though, that one doesn't represent everything.) Alex