At first, I was completely confused during the workshop as to what we were doing but suddenly it all made sense. We do everything to the base value of 10, this is called the decimal system. Why is that? Some believe it is because we have 10 fingers but is this the only reason we could up in 10s.
Why do we use the base value of 10 and not 12?
12 is a highly composite number (Dvorsky, 2013). It divides neatly by more numbers than 10 does. It divides by 1,2,3,4, 6 and 12 leaving no remainders while 10 divides by 1,2,5 and 10 leaving no remainders (Bellos, 2012). Due to this, fractions appear easier as 1/3 of 10 is 0.333…. while 1/3 of 12 is 0.4 leaving a neater number making fractions appear easier.
There is already some examples of 12 base systems in the world;
- There is 12 months in a year
- Grocers deals are often in dozens
- Our day is divided in two sets of 12
- 360 degree in a circle which is 12 sets of 30
A blog by George Dvorsky (2013) states that historically, someone thought about this. Twelve is the last number before we go back to derivations of 3, 4, 5, etc. This suggests that there is some recognition of the 12-base system.
It is still possible to count in 12 using your fingers, this is shown below.
To use 12 as the base system two additional symbols would need to be added instead of 10 and 11 as they have two units. This was the where I confused myself the most. Once I changed the numbers to letters, I understood what we were doing and when I moved back to using numbers it became clearer. As much as I now understand the 12 base system, I do not think it is suitable to change completely from using the base value of 10 as it is what we are used to and it has been used for so long that it is what people understand
Reference
Dvorsky, G. (2013) ‘Why we should switch to a base-12 counting system’ Available at: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5977095/why-we-should-switch-to-a-base-12-counting-system (accessed on 17/10/16)
Bellos, A (2012) ‘Dozenalists of the world unite! Rise up against the tyranny of ten!’ Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2012/dec/12/dozenalists-world-unite-tyranny-ten (accessed on 17/10/16)
