5 ms·
if "base 10" is a tautology, wouldn't that make "deci-mal" a tautology too? so yeah, just hold up 10 fingers and don't say anything.
by macawfish 11y ago
if "base 10" is a tautology, wouldn't that make "deci-mal" a tautology too?
so yeah, just hold up 10 fingers and don't say anything.
- nsajko 11y agoBut numerals "10" in bases other than decimal aren't usually called ten, I think.
- smellf 11y ago"10" is never correctly called "ten" except in decimal. But this whole tangent is getting a little navel-gazey for me. "Base 10" is fine in my book because decimal is our inbuilt base.
- nsajko 11y agoThat's what I said (or tried to :) ).
- rlucas 11y agoShould we call it "base a"?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kaoD 11y agoTen is "decem" in Latin. Decimal means, literally, base ten. It's a tautology either way. You can't even specify the base of the base since "base (10 in base 10)" presents the same problem recursively. It's a non-problem though. I don't know about mathematicians, but when programmers say base N they mean N in decimal. EDIT: woops, replied to the wrong post.
- munchbunny 11y agoI get the parent poster's point, but to me it's like quibbling over people using "comprised of" instead of "comprises": some people will care, but in the grand scheme of things it's not a meaningful disagreement because everybody got what you were trying to say the first time, and there are only a few rare contexts where the distinction matters.
- leni536 11y agoBase (((((((((1++)++)++)++)++)++)++)++)++) Peano would be proud.