At 03:55 PM 6/18/2001, Cyril A Slobin wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 pycyn@aol.com wrote: > As the specification of bases makes clear, Lojban considers decimal as > fundamental. Anyway, duodecimal is the most convenient form for humans > (finger counting aside). In fact finger counting is even more convenient in duodecimal - four fingers have twelve phalanxes, and thumb is used for counting. Only one hand is used instead of two. BTW, how to say 'phalanx' and 'thumb' in Lojban?
You can't claim an advantage for one base over another on the basis of finger counting. You can count up to 1023 on two hands in binary (or if you are really good, in Gray code, where successive numbers differ by one bit). Taking four fingers as 1 each and the thumb as 5, you can do two-column decimal abacus calculations on your hands, a practice which has been taught in schools. Octal actually occurs naturally somewhere in the world where they count on fingers but not thumbs. Duodecimal is described above. The same dodge using the joints and fingertips rather than the phalanxes gives you hex. If you take off your shoes and socks you can do base 20. Counting on the phalanxes of one hand and the fingers of the other gives you base 60.
-- Cyril Slobin <slobin@ice.ru>