Using order-of-magnitude prefixes to scale up and down units is orthogonal to base. Things just look strange if you refer to other bases in base 10. Consider b

Using order-of-magnitude prefixes to scale up and down units is orthogonal to base. Things just look strange if you refer to other bases in base 10. Consider base-2 prefixes (now being known as kibi, mebi, gibi, etc) 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes 1 mebibyte = 1048576 bytes These don't look like nice round numbers because I am representing scaling of a base 2 number in base 10. It's more clear if I say: 1 kibibyte = 10000000000 1 mebibyte = 100000000000000000000 1 gibibyte = 1000000000000000000000000000000 Each further prefix just adds 10 zeros to the binary value. Just like metric prefixes add zeros. One kilometer would still equal 1000 meters. But that 1000 is now in base 12, not in base 10. So rather than 10^3 it's now 12^3. But that just seems strange because you grew up with base 10. Eggs and doughnuts and many other things are measured in 12 because of its historical utility. It allows you to say things like "I'd like a quarter of dozen" and "a third of a dozen" which are not possible with 10. Extending a bit further, if you want division by 2, 3, 4, and 5 you can go up to base 60. The Babylonians (among others) did this and nowadays we have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 6 * 60 degrees in a circle, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal