4 ms·

Ternary?

• jeffbee 2mo ago
  Knuth's base-e proposal enters the chat. They were right about everything 50+ years ago, but they didn't have the budget for the right hardware, had to write conference papers and books instead.
  • jacquesm 2mo ago
    I can totally see how ternary would work from a physical implementation perspective but I have a really hard time visualizing anything using base-e, can you explain how such a thing would work in practice?
    • jeffbee 2mo ago
      No it's impossible. But it would be optimal!
      • jacquesm 2mo ago
        Ah, the spherical cow of number bases :) Thanks for the response, that saved me a sleepless night.
• Razengan 2mo ago
  Maybe we have to do what quaternions did for complex numbers and jump straight from 2 to 4