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View submission: xkcd: D.B. Cooper
No, 'thirty seven' is the English-language representation of a specific abstract quantity. In a base-38 or higher number system it would have a single digit; in binary it has six.
Comment by cdcformatc at 28/07/2014 at 20:39 UTC*
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
As an abstract idea I agree, 37 is a specific quantity. As my original post explains, I was just pointing out you would have a hard time communicating this in English. Presumably if you use such a base, you would have a character or word to represent that number. Maybe you could use the word 'star' or 'exclamation point'.
You can't use 'thirty seven' because in your base, the English word 'thirty' means something different than what it does in base 10.
If I used base 16 for everything and I wrote a number down, those familiar with another base would have to convert that to something equivalent. And that number would have a specific number of digits, each represented by a character and a position. In English the phrase 'thirty seven' is equivalent to 'thirty and seven' which have specific meanings of 30 and 7. Or otherwise a two digit number.