RE: [lojban] Re: possible A-F...

["Craig" <ragnarok@pobox.com>]

>It seems reasonable to suppose that half the time when we want to
>divide something, we want to divide it by 2, half the remaining time,
>by 3, half the remaining time after that, by 4, and so on. So divisibility
>by 7 or more is not going to be a great advantage, but divisibility
>by 3 and 4 is.

I think that it is more than half for twos, or ought to be. In our modern
world, one of the most useful things with numbers for humans to be able to
do without thinking too hard that will not be done by calculators is
conceptions of scale. If I tell you that person a spent one thousand
dollars, and person b spent one billion dollars, you may not realize quite
how much more that is in a way that you can understand - if I point out that
that is like multiplying it by ten 6 times, you have to hope that your brain
easily concieves of how much larger that is. Most people's don't. But if I
point out that that is like doubling it ten times, that is easier for most
people to grok. So powers of two have an advantage provided people have
calculators. But it is not, IMHO, a big enough deal to be worth switching
bases. If Tinkit and Bwafc found his own country, he can declare sixteen as
default. But for the rest of us, why not memorizing the following
approximations of the powers of two to easily think of such scales
accurately:

0, 1, 2, 3,  4,  5,  6,  7,   8,   9,   10,   11,   12,           13,
14,             15
1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4100 or 4000, 8200 or
8000, 16500 or 16000, 33000 or 35000

                             --la kreig.daniyl.

     'coi doi drata mibypre
     .i pu temci so'i detri
     .i mi'o na cafne ka'e tavla
     .i lenu go'i cu zekri
     .ija'e ko mi cusku le do nambi
     .i mi ba go'i do
     .i mi'o cmila joi maltavla joi mi'atavla
     joi pinxe le vanju'
                     -la djimis.BYFet

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