3 ms·

A few more cultural traits: Finger Counting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_counting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_counting - this is what caught up

• civilian 15y ago
  We should finger count in binary! Which will lead to the question: "Are you thumb-indexed or index-indexed?"
  • redthrowaway 15y ago
    Being index-indexed would decrease the size of a number you could count on your hands while maintaining a logical bit ordering by 768 (1024 - 256), so we should all be thumb-indexed. The proper comparison with endianness would be thumb- or pinky-indexed, but physiological limitations make pinky-indexing pretty useless (try counting to 2 in binary, starting with your pinky), so we should, again, be thumb-indexed.
  • pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    A sort of mixed 5-ary (pentinary?) works well too. Count to 5 on your dominant hand and then use your other hand twice for the the next highest place digit. Count from the thumb, then when both hands are full, at 30, drop the left hand thumb. This is strong IMO as counting to 5 on one hand is quick and easy. Though I've only used this a couple of times. I know some BSL too which means I can count to 19 using different hand gestures of one hand (my right) quite readily. Using that with the above method of holding the higher placed digit gives me a count of 200 that I can work with much more easily than using binary. I find binary finger counting very hard. Practically I tend to just use mental arithmetic and work with images of digits in sums in my head.