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No it doesn't. For one thing, 12 doesn't have the factor 5. Who says having the factor of 3 is better? And the whole 10 fingers thing? That might be useful to
by Jabbles 16y ago
No it doesn't.
For one thing, 12 doesn't have the factor 5. Who says having the factor of 3 is better?
And the whole 10 fingers thing? That might be useful to keep.
I assume the article wasn't meant to be taken literally, but it's hardly high-quality content, and I'm sure everyone who reads HN knows about non-decimal based systems.
- jgrahamc 16y agoThe point is that 12 has more factors than 10 making a lot of everyday calculations easier. Sure you lose dividing by 5, but you gain dividing by 3, 4 and 6. Also, you get nice decimals for common fractions. I assume the article wasn't meant to be taken literally I think it makes a lot of sense to use base-12 instead of base-10. Of course, it'll never happen because it'd be an almost impossible change given the weight of education and the metric system.
- mooism2 16y agoIt might have made sense to use base 12 in the first place, but it certainly doesn't make sense to switch from base 10 to base 12 now.
- alenlpeacock 16y ago3 is a more useful factor for many applications, including measurement for architecture, art, photography, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds If I had to rank factors that would be most useful for measurement, I'd put 2, 3, and 4, and even 8 above 5.