01-11-2018, 01:02 AM
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#38519
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Famous Potatoes
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarlacc
No, base-6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senary explains it better than I could:
"Each regular human hand may be said to have six unambiguous positions; a fist, one finger (or thumb) extended, two, three, four and then all five extended.
If the right hand is used to represent a unit, and the left to represent the 'sixes', it becomes possible for one person to represent the values from zero to 55 senary (35 decimal) with their fingers, rather than the usual ten obtained in standard finger counting. e.g. if three fingers are extended on the left hand and four on the right, 34 senary is represented. This is equivalent to 3 × 6 + 4 which is 22 decimal.
Which hand is used for the 'sixes' and which the units is down to preference on the part of the counter, however when viewed from the counter's perspective, using the left hand as the most significant digit correlates with the written representation of the same senary number. Flipping the 'sixes' hand around to its backside may help to further disambiguate which hand represents the 'sixes' and which represents the units.
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So the difference is what we call "1"
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