0
$\begingroup$

Possible Duplicate:
why have we chosen our number system to be decimal (base 10)

0,1,2,3,.......9! What are the reasons fow which this system is the most popular? Why not any other base? It though seems to us that working with bases 4,5,2 or 12 might be difficult, but isn't that because we know there are simple numbers like 10,20..............? It also seems that the question would remain the same if it was 3 instead of 10, but that would again demand an answer. What are the reasons that would make one particular base lead the others?

  • 14
    Well my guess is because humans have a total of ten fingers.2012-08-13
  • 5
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal#History2012-08-13
  • 8
    I'm counting the reasons on my fingers...2012-08-13
  • 3
    well it used to be 60 in Sumer and Babylon, and there are remnants of base 20 in french (80=quatre-vingt, literally "four twenty"). Also technically speaking the base is *always* $10$, by the definition of what $10$ denotes in that base.2012-08-13
  • 2
    @copper.hat: 1023 is a huge lot of reasons... ;)2012-08-13
  • 1
    Irish (as in Gaelic language) has remnants of a base 20 system (fiche). Of course, Hamilton introduced the quaternions and we never looked back...2012-08-13
  • 0
    Closely related: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/166869/2012-08-13

3 Answers 3