All your base

In which I spend too much time on the bus thinking about base systems.

We tend to just assume that we use base 10 as our main numerical system because we have ten fingers. But what about the toes? Wouldn’t that put us in base 20?

When using base 16 we have to use letters for some of the digits because we only have ten numbers – 0 through 9. But if we’d started with a base 16 system, would we have come up with 6 more number symbols? If we’d stayed in a base system with fewer numbers, say only base 6, would we have ever come up with 6, 7, 8, and 9?

November 20th is Absurdity Day. And I fully realize that many of my thoughts like these are a bit on the absurd side. But you have to admit, they do make things interesting. 😀