| Decimal is culturally neutral, not because it belongs to no culture (like duodec and hex), but because it is used by all cultures, with a few ancient or primitive exceptions (the latter not needing big numbers apparently). Even cultures that have other systems for specific things use decimal for the general case. Hex does occur in some cultures (American included) in the special case of weights, where it is derived from the direct balance scale, which makes halving easy and thriding or fifthing hard. The same happens in India and in Rome (can someone check Chinese?), even though everything else is decimal there (there are even special money/weight abaci -- and the exchequer board -- for dealing with these peculiar numbers). This carries over to volumes in the English (now only American) system (despite "A pint's a pound the world around"). And there are odd cases like the furlong. But all specialized, as hexies today are -- computerwallahs all. Dozenists tend to be some other kind of geeks: non-computer mathematicians, historians and other liberal arts types. But every one is a decimalist most of the time. |