Tricks, tips, tutorials, pictures and words

Does counting work the way we do it?

....A 10 digit decimal system obviously means we are all lunatics. 24 hours in a day? 7 in a week? 12 months in a year? 60 minutes in an hour?
Yahoo! 360° - tricks, tips, tutorials, pictures and words - The dumb question

I'm still thinking about our 10 digit system, the number 10 really relates to nothing. Our binary method 1 and 0 is a lot better but we have no way to pronounce 00010111 Any simple calculation becomes rocket science thanks to our irrational teaching of how to think. We can only word numbers on a scale of 10, 0123456789. At first sight hex sounds perfect 0123456789ABCDEF but what use does 16 segments have really?

I think 3 and 2 hold a clue, it would be nice if 10 was only 6, it would divide into 2 parts of 3 or 3 parts of 2. Half of 100 would be 30, 1/3 of 100 would be 20. Much better as 33.33333333333333333333

The hex "F" translates to 16, it divides into 3 parts of 4 as 10 divides into 2 parts of 5.

the zero in hex is the 1 in the 10 digit system.

The way the clock works with various scales mixed together is a good example. It's really complicated to calculate time this way. A million seconds doesn't mean anything. 480 hours is howmanny months?

The month is a really strange scale. Imagine how we pay tax on a number like that. 5/7 part of around 30 days times 8 blocks of 60 seconds times 60 minutes filling 365 times 24 blocks of 60 seconds times 60 minutes.

If we are just as dumb as the inventors of all this, how did we ever get used to it?