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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
Multiples of 6 are a great idea because they give nice fractions for 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and 1/6. You see 12 showing up as base in one way or another in many places. Using 10 gives nice fractions for 1/5 but that's far less important than 1/3. It's hard to see a reason to pick 10 except for matching the number of fingers.
Comment by birdandsheep at 25/07/2024 at 15:02 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Number theoretical properties like fraction expressions and positional systems post date counting by millenia. They were not considered at all. The Maya had a system which would sometimes have 20 symbols in a position and sometimes 5. Perhaps this was convenient for expressing 365.
It's a convenient backsplanation to talk about things we want like fractions, but early peoples primarily cared about counting.