What about Imperial weights and measures? We have 16 Tablespoons to the Cup, 16 Cups to the gallon, and 63 Gallons to the hogshead. (63? Not 64? Maybe they needed a little headspace in the barrel? And, it depends on whether you're measuring beer or wine. And even then, sources vary.) We've been using hexadecimal, but not a compact representation of it.
There are 16 oz. to the pound, so if you were born at 7 lbs. 8 oz., that would just be 0x78 oz. (Where "0x" is the usual prefix to distinguish between decimal and hex numbers.)
I always found it interesting that the Babylonians used base 60 - which would seem on the face of it to be absurdly impractical for calculating by hand, but does have the advantage of a huge number of divisors
I was going to make a digression about that subject but forgot. From what I’ve read, there is a lot of confusion about why the babylonians chose Base-60 for their mathematical needs since it can’t be derived from the human body in a clear and easy way as decimal can.
No, my age would be 66 in decimal. It's 0x42 IN hexadecimal, using the "0x" prefix convention that I described in the second paragraph. (It's recognized by C, Java, C++, and Python, for example.) Now, I guess I wasn't completely clear. I should have said "Where 0x is the prefix that indicates hexadecimal, when no prefix indicates decimal."
This article is not off base at all. It's good to find mathematical speculation on subslack alongside poetry and fiction.
What about Imperial weights and measures? We have 16 Tablespoons to the Cup, 16 Cups to the gallon, and 63 Gallons to the hogshead. (63? Not 64? Maybe they needed a little headspace in the barrel? And, it depends on whether you're measuring beer or wine. And even then, sources vary.) We've been using hexadecimal, but not a compact representation of it.
There are 16 oz. to the pound, so if you were born at 7 lbs. 8 oz., that would just be 0x78 oz. (Where "0x" is the usual prefix to distinguish between decimal and hex numbers.)
Lathechuck. Age 0x42.
I thought most imperial units were duodecimal, or at least the ones devoted to length. I was unaware of this being the case.
Btw, your age would be 2A in hexadecimal and HeKa in Bibi-binary.
I always found it interesting that the Babylonians used base 60 - which would seem on the face of it to be absurdly impractical for calculating by hand, but does have the advantage of a huge number of divisors
I was going to make a digression about that subject but forgot. From what I’ve read, there is a lot of confusion about why the babylonians chose Base-60 for their mathematical needs since it can’t be derived from the human body in a clear and easy way as decimal can.
No, my age would be 66 in decimal. It's 0x42 IN hexadecimal, using the "0x" prefix convention that I described in the second paragraph. (It's recognized by C, Java, C++, and Python, for example.) Now, I guess I wasn't completely clear. I should have said "Where 0x is the prefix that indicates hexadecimal, when no prefix indicates decimal."
Oh, I wasn’t aware of that convention.
Well, 42 decimal is 2A hexadecimal.