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> If you're like me and immediately said ohhhhhhhhhhhh, so THAT'S why there's twelve hours in a day! and immediately followed it up with: wait, why the fuck are
by dpark 8y ago
> If you're like me and immediately said ohhhhhhhhhhhh, so THAT'S why there's twelve hours in a day! and immediately followed it up with: wait, why the fuck are they using twelve instead of ten? ...
> It's most likely because you have twelve joints in your hands: three in each of the four fingers, excluding the thumb. I thought that was pretty nifty to discover. Like, I had never looked at my hands before, really. Hands are really wild, when you think about it.
Probably not. This explanation of duodecimal is really farfetched and I’m pretty sure it arose from someone staring at their hands desperately trying to come up with a way to count 12 on their fingers to explain this. (Ten fingers and two feet seems as likely.)
Clocks are (probably) divided into (two sets of) 12 hours for the same reason feet are divided into 12 inches. Because it’s convenient for everyday use. Subdivisions of 1/12th suck for complex math (if your number system is decimal anyway), but are great for lay use. 12 subunits captures halves, thirds, and quarters, all of which are very intuitive and very common in everyday use.
12ths are handy enough that we have a special word for “12 of something” (dozen) even though our numbering system is decimal.
- Jedd 8y ago> 12ths are handy enough that we have a special word for “12 of something” (dozen) even though our numbering system is decimal. My understanding is that the etymology of dozen is originally traced back to duodecim (Latin for twelve) via French dozeine. Which is interesting, but doesn't really explain why it's special beyond your observation that it's a highly composite, but comfortably small, number.
- Iv 8y ago> dozeine. French nitpicker here. We now write it "douzaine" but spellings have changed through the ages.
- Hemospectrum 8y agoYep. Most of the "French" words in English (beef, butcher, danger, very, act...) actually come from dialects brought over by the Normans when they conquered England in 1066. That's closer on the timeline to Latin than modern French.
- pishpash 8y agoIt's special because we don't have a word for, e.g., "13 of something", say, "trezen".
- jclulow 8y ago"baker's dozen"
- daveFNbuck 8y agoThat's two words.
- Jedd 8y ago> It's special because we don't have a word for, e.g., "13 of something", say, "trezen". Hmm, how about 14 of something? You have a fortnight to respond. Though if you take about a sennight longer to think about it, you'll still get a good score.
- giaour 8y agoModern French allows the "aine" suffix to be applied to many numbers, meaning "a group of X." I've mostly heard it used with 10 ("dixaine") or 12 ("douzaine"), though if you asked for a "treizaine" (13) of something, you would be understood. It is interesting that "dozen" made it into everyday English but other group sizes did not.
- _asummers 8y agoI might not be remembering my History of Math correctly, but my recollection is that the Babylonians used Base 60, and 12 is an even subdivision of that. I also recall other Asian number systems having base 12 in some capacity, so there may be something to the counting methodology he outlined if it showed up in a few separate parts of the world. Counting that way on one hand and then using the other hand to tally the groups would give you 5 sets of 12 or 60.
- goodpass 8y agoWait, doesn’t that just give you 25?
- _asummers 8y agoNo, counting to 12 using the sections between your knuckles of your 4 fingers using your thumb on same hand will give you 3x4 and then 5 of those is 60. If you were doing fingers as a single digit, you'd get 25, though.
- waterhouse 8y agoWiki[1] seems to support your last sentence's description of how base 60 appeared. Now, that approach would guarantee that your base is a product of two numbers (# fingers * # bones on non-thumb fingers). And, if your non-thumb fingers are roughly equivalent to each other, then that would guarantee it's a product of three numbers (# fingers * # non-thumb fingers * # bones per non-thumb finger). So I would say "it's a product of lots of numbers" does have a lot to do with the origins of base 60. Base 10, of course, is (# hands * # fingers per hand). Base 12 being more factorable than base 10 is just the luck of getting 3 * 4 vs 2 * 5. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
- jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago> Probably not. This explanation of duodecimal is really farfetched and I’m pretty sure it arose from someone staring at their hands desperately trying to come up with a way to count 12 on their fingers to explain this. You are mistaken. Finger counting by using your thumb against one of the 12 segments of your fingers is common in many asian cultures. It's utterly simple and immensely practical as it allows you to count up to 144 with both hands.
- dpark 8y agoThat is an interesting fact I wasn't aware of. I have doubts about the actual relevance of this, though. e.g. Chinese seems (so far as I can tell) to have always used decimal numbering systems, making this essentially a clever counting trick.
- jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago"I had no idea this thing even existed but let me continue to tell you why it's inferior"
- dpark 8y agoI didn’t say it’s “inferior”. I said it’s not the foundation of their numbering system because their numbering system is not duodecimal.
- chrisweekly 8y agoYes! 12-column UI layout templates caught on in the early days of RWD for good reason.