In our society and culture, we use counting everyday. If we woke up one morning and had lost the ability to count or there were no longer any number names then we would struggle to function with daily activities. The number symbols on our clock would no longer have any meaning. Processing amounts of stock in shops would become a mammoth task and splitting the cocktail bill on a night out would be impossible!
Recent studies into Amazon Indian Tribes have shown that counting for them is really as simple as one, two, thee and maybe four. They do not have the counting vocabulary to specifically identify amounts larger than 4. Their counting language is the equivalent to one, two, few and many. I can’t imagine going into my local pub and asking for ‘many drinks’ when buying a round for 7 people. Our daily lives rely on our ability to use number names and our use of the Arabic numeral system. (This numeral system was introduced to Europe in the 10th century by Arabic speakers of North Africa.)
Although for us, the process of counting is so fundamental to our perception of quantity. For these tribe members in the Amazon, counting is needed very little in their daily lives. They have very little to do with transactions, trade and calculations (to be honest, I would probably love it there!).
For one of our activities during our counting and numerals workshop, we were tasked with creating our own numeral system and deciding if it would stick to similar rules as our own numeral system or if we would like to explore something entirely different. We came up with a 12 number based system which is different to our arabic numeral system which goes up to 9. We built on the foundation of a dice number system and continued from there. We decided to call our numeral system ‘Decinals’.
Unbeknown to me, there is actually a society which promotes the use of a base twelve system and they suggest that our current base 10 system is not the best system to use for humans! As the bast 10 system is so firmly embedded within our brains, it is almost impossible for me to think of counting in any other way! I find it confusing! In our recent lecture on place value, we were introduced to the dozenal system in the form of a number square and a times-tabele square! If i didn’t feel baffled before, I was certainly baffled now!
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Dozenal_multiplication_table.
I can understand what is going on in this table up until 2×7 = 12??
I have to continually remind myself that 10 in this table doesn’t represent what we consider to be 10 in our system. Ten in the dozenal system is represented by an upside down 2 and 10 represents what we would consider to be twelve!
An interesting point to make is that young children would be able to pick up the dozenal system much quicker that we could because they do not have the base 10 system embedded in their minds. This is something they learn when they go to school.
After doing some further reading and research into this area, I am beginning to wonder myself if intact a base 12 system would be easier for us to us. I found an article which discusses the main advantages of a dozenal system and after reading it and then reflecting on the points discussed, I have to say they have very good reasonings for their initiative. I especially liked the ‘It’s All About the Factors’ section. It notes that ten only has two factors, being 2 and 5. Whereas 12 has 2,3,4 and 6. Consequently we are able to use the three most common fractions without having to employ fractional notations. Fractions was one of my weakest subjects at school and I now pose myself the question, “Do I think I would have understood fractions better if we used a base-12 system?” Of course I’ll never know the actually answer, but part of me likes to think I might have!
Take a look at the following links to support this post! I particularly like the ‘Why we should change to a bas-12 system’. It really helped explain the idea of a dozenal system and made the thought using it very appealing.
Links:
