-> The base 12 system is good for physics. 12 months to the year, 24
-> hours a day, 60 seconds per minute, 12 inches per foot, 8 pints per
-> gallon, etc., etc. So American units follow a "rational" design. Just
-> because humans have 10 fingers doesn't make it rational. 2/3 of ten
-> might get you a Ph.D., but 2/3 of twelve is a sheet of plywood. 12 is
-> a very "rational" number.
When I was a kid, I learned the multiplication table in base-12,
thinking it would stand me in good stead when the world adopted 12 as
the common number base. I'm still waiting.
Of course, the advantage of 12 is that it's a multiple of 3. On the
other hand, it is not a multiple of 5, which 10 is. You can divide a
number of feet by 3 and get a whole number of inches, but you can't
(usually) divide by 5 and get a whole number of inches. If you divide a
whole number of metres by 5, you always get a whole number of
centimetres, but you can't usually divide by 3 and get such a nice
result.
In short, 10 and 12 both have advantages and disadvantages.
30, which is a multiple of 2, 3, and 5, could be used as a number-base
and would allow simple divisions by any of these primes. But division
by 7 would not work as well. 60, which the Babylonians used, is no
better than 30. 210 (2 x 3 x 5 x 7) would be good, but it would be hard
to invent that-many simple squiggles to represent digits.
There is no "best" number-base. We have a heavy investment in 10, and
we might as well keep it.
dow
|
