More Foolishness
Dread and Awful Czar,
While we’re on the subject of foolish questions…
If cartoon characters have 8 digits (3 fingers and a thumb on each hand), why do they use a decimal, rather than an octal numeric system?
Best,
Dr. J.P.S. – I was at that game in 1978. Our seats were in section 351. I miss the old Veterans Stadium.
Ten fingers does not guarantee acceptance of a decimal system! For example, French uses a number system based on twenty: ninety-nine, for example, is quatre vingt dix neuf: four twenties plus ten and nine. French isn’t alone, as Albanian, Georgian, Basque, Danish, Welsh (and most Celtic languages), Pashto, Ossetic, some Kurdish, Khonda, Nahuatl and Ainu either use or used a base 20 system. Even English bears a vestigial trace of this in the now-totally-unused word score.
The Aztecs, who spoke something like Nahuatl, had to do some fabulous math in order to render big numbers (which they did often): 1,976 is read as näuh-tzontli caxtölli-om-ëyi-pöhualli caxtölli-on-cë, or four × twenty-squared + fifteen and three × twenty + fifteen and one. One wonders how they might render the Obama-sized numbers. Could take a while.
Fulfulde, a West African language even the Volgi does not speak, counts on a base 5 system. About 15 million people count this way. And base 4 systems exist in Indonesia.
And there are other examples. However, the writing systems of the world today largely use decimal, which caught on very early as an easy way to group numbers efficiently. And base 10 systems tend to remain inherently compatible with whatever languages you speak: the Romans spoke a largely decimal language (there is a little awkwardness around 18-20, but it corrects itself at 21 and beyond). But they wrote with a base five system: I-IIII represented fingers, V represented the whole hand; X represented two hands together. IV became four and IX became nine much later.
English for example reads 12 as twelve, even though it is technically written as one-ten plus two-ones. You don’t even think about the mathematical conversion when you write, read, or speak the number.
But the Czar does.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.