Showerthoughts

29178 readers

329 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

All posts must be showerthoughts
The entire showerthought must be in the title
Posts must be original/unique
Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

132

Tally marks are just a base-1 numbering system (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

and every fifth digit is just put in an odd place

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 months ago (4 children)

It's a unary numeral system , but it doesn't really have a base, because it's not a positional number system.

Another similar thing to think about is the Roman numeral system. it starts out as unary system, but quickly turns into a mix of base 5 and 10 and even without a fixed position. That's also not a positional number system even if can be considered to have a base and a secondary base..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I think it's reasonable to say it completes that pattern of basal numbers. Saying that it's not positional is like saying that the base10 number 5555 isn't positional - it's just that all the digits happen to be the same.

Now base zero....

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm not familiar with what basal numbers means.

Anyway, 5555 is just one number in the decimal system that fulfills the requirement that the position of digits is irrelevant, whereas most decimal numbers do not. In the tally mark system all numbers fulfill this requirement.

However, the thing I like most about it is that you'll never need to prove that I+I=II. It literally is II.

I remember reading the book called "Gödel, Escher, Bach" which is about Gödels incompleteness theorem. At some point it comes across this kind of thing and demonstrates how any natural number is the successor of the previous number, basically defining numbers as tally marks. From there it goes on to demonstrate why math itself is incomplete. It's kinda a fat book, but if you're into numbers, logic and coding it's a must read.

load more comments (1 replies)