It is not a coincidence Latitude is measure the same as time. Time's main purpose in the early days of sailing was navigation.

That's a good point. All of the considerations brought up on this thread show just how man has progressed through time.

 

You'll get no doubt from me there PRS, IQ isn't well understood, but teaching is only a portion of it. Some people have an inherent ability to learn from what they're exposed to even if it's not being taught to them, where as some people I've seen can't be taught by simple plain language instruction, then again they were probably wasted savants.

 

You're saying a whole lot there sceadwian. It hurts me to address this issue. What you said is true, but I hate to admit it.

 

It shouldn't hurt you PRS, it's life, life isn't easy and a single advantage is not a free ride through life no matter how large that advantage is in one catagory, successful evolution has to come from ALL aspects of a human being not one. We must be physically balanced enough to function individually, emotionally balanced enough to deal with the chaotic changes in a group, intelligent enough to react to the patterns over time to better our overall situation and a memory good enough to become wise and distill simple truths to prevent the recurrence of the same errors over and over again.

 

It shouldn't hurt you PRS, it's life, life isn't easy and a single advantage is not a free ride through life no matter how large that advantage is in one catagory, successful evolution has to come from ALL aspects of a human being not one. We must be physically balanced enough to function individually, emotionally balanced enough to deal with the chaotic changes in a group, intelligent enough to react to the patterns over time to better our overall situation and a memory good enough to become wise and distill simple truths to prevent the recurrence of the same errors over and over again.

Wow ... The world of wisdom, Believe it or not, I learnt these words from my mom, just before going to high school about 15 years ago. I hope everyone understand the true meaning of these word.

You got to love this website and all the wisdom people here

Cheers

 

The base 10 was first developed by Indian mathematicians,its based on geometric angles.Its a big history...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system

Good luck

 

The base 10 was first developed by Indian mathematicians,its based on geometric angles.Its a big history...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system

Good luck

Re-read the second paragraph of the first link. The positional holder (zero) was invented in India, and has indeed an interesting history. But, base-10 number systems were not. They were used by other cultures before then.

John

 

Re-read the second paragraph of the first link. The positional holder (zero) was invented in India, and has indeed an interesting history. But, base-10 number systems were not. They were used by other cultures before then.
John

Are you kidding ,as per you zero was invented in India but base 10 was not,I think without zero base 10 is incomplete,its like this (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) 10 digits.

Read this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numerals

 

Are you kidding ,as per you zero was invented in India but base 10 was not,I think without zero base 10 is incomplete,its like this (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) 10 digits.

No, I am not kidding. You are simply wrong in asserting that base 10 was originally invented in India. Well, actually no one can prove or disprove where it was invented. The evidence you cite, however, does not show it was invented there.

Even children learn to count on their fingers starting at 1, not 0. And, earlier cultures did as well. I think you are confusing the representation of our numbers with the base on which the calculations are done. As you probably read, the Romans used base 10 and there is no "zero" in Roman numerals.

John

 

Zero wasn't invented there either....
The first recorded evidence of zero as a placeholder comes from Babylonia, which would give the honor's to the current physical location of Iraq...

I'm not sure where Debjit is getting their information from, but it's definitly not from historical record, there are numerous refrences to zero having first been used in Babylonia. The Greeks weren't sure of zero's state as a number because of the philosophical conundrum of referring to 0 (an entity) to represent a void. Although according to the Wikpedia entry India is credited as the source where zero was first generally used as a number (not just a placeholder)

I've previously read http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Biograph...6476/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286576219&sr=8-1

And it's a good read because it really puts some serious scope on how such a basic 'common sense' thing such as zero evolved.

 

One of my profs once said that a base 12 system is better than any else but he never bothered to explain it; absent-minded I guess. Was it Hubbard who had the aliens with the curious mathematical system with coded numbers at the points of stars or some shape so that the 'other aliens' could not steal their math?

 

Base 12 has a few advantages, but nothing major. It is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, which means if you are a shop keeper you can divide product several different ways.

 

I think you are confusing the representation of our numbers with the base on which the calculations are done

John I think this post started for decimal base 10 which we use today and I was talking about decimal base 10 ,although Romans base 10 was their but it was not that much efficient as decimal base 10.

sceadwian,the Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero

 

Doing arithmetic calculations using binary is easier but takes longer, longer, longer than using decimal.
It would be terribly slow for us humans to use binary.
It works well for computers because they have processors, and they can do calculations with 1's and 0's very fast.

 

Base 12 has a few advantages, but nothing major. It is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, which means if you are a shop keeper you can divide product several different ways.

I like base 60 (minutes, seconds of time and arc). Divisible by 1,2,3,4,5 & 6.

or base 360 (degrees). Divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,15 & 18. This beats radians so bad for dividing.

 

Slide rules aren't marked in hexadecimal. We would have never made it to the moon!

 

A teacher I had in the 1950’s said the advantage of abandoning our Imperial systems for decimal would be that we could divide and multiply a number by 10 to the power of x simply by moving the decimal point.

 

A teacher I had in the 1950’s said the advantage of abandoning our Imperial systems for decimal would be that we could divide and multiply a number by 10 to the power of x simply by moving the decimal point.

I hope that was in 3rd grade or thereabouts.

Of course, in the duodecimal system (aka, dodecimal, base 12), the decimal point becomes the duodecimal point and so forth. Using the characters 1..B to represent the decimal numbers 1..11, decimal 12 = B0; decimal 12X12 = B00

Happy Halloween, a day late and maybe a smile short.

John

 

...decimal 12 = B0; decimal 12X12 = B00

oops! in base 12, decimal 12 = B; decimal 12X12 = B0; ... decimal 12X12X12 = B00



...the advantage of abandoning our decimal system for (insert your base here) would be that we could divide and multiply a number by (insert your base here) to the power of x simply by moving the decimal point.

Funny how that works.

 

oops! in base 12, decimal 12 = B; decimal 12X12 = B0; ... decimal 12X12X12 = B00

Nope. In base 12, decimal 12 = 10; decimal 12X12 = 100

Sorry, I was overcome by the occasion. It should be in base 12, decimal 11 =B; decimal 11X12 = B0; and decimal 12X12X11 = B00


John