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Old 07-24-2016, 08:51 AM   #9
drjd
The Couch Potato
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In fact the Base-12 systems, duodecimal or dozenal, have been popular in the past because multiplication/division/addition/subtraction are fairly easy. Twelve is a useful base because it has many factors. It is the smallest common multiple of one, two, three, four and six. The standard 12-hour clock and common use of 12 in English units emphasize the utility of the base. Also, before adopting to decimal, the old British currency Pound Sterling (GBP) partially used base-12; there were 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound, and therefore 240 pence in a pound.

The Maya and other civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica used base-20 (vigesimal), as did several North American tribes. Remnants of a Gaulish base-20 system also exist in French. For example, sixty-five is soixante-cinq (literally, "sixty [and] five"), while seventy-five is soixante-quinze (literally, "sixty [and] fifteen"). In Old French, forty was expressed as two twenties and sixty was three twenties, so that fifty-three was expressed as two twenties [and] thirteen, and so on.

The Babylonian numeral system, base-60, was the first positional system developed, and is still used today to count time and angles.

The Hindu–Arabic numeral system, base-10, is the most commonly used system in the world today for most calculations.
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