We Need Less Numbers

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When counting we go to 9 then 10.
I think that we need to loose the 9 and go directly to 10 from 8.

So what you're saying is that we should switch from base 10, to base 9. Have the numeral "10" ( a one and a zero) represent 9 instead of ten.

Why not just go all of the way to what your computer does, and go with binary (aka "base two")?

You would have zero to represent zero, 1 for one, and "10" to represent two, "11" to represent three, and so on.

I took a whole Uni class in Base # Mathematics, back in the 80s.
It went further than Base into Algebra.
I'd never heard of it before and had no bleeding clue what they were on about.
I managed to figure it out and it was fun.

Is it still taught?

Never heard of a math class devoted to just the concept of base numbers. But somewhere in highschool or jr. High some teacher introduced the basic idea to us. I was an aspie who like to design my imaginary countries on a map. Each with its own culture etc. And one of my countries had a French Revolution type revolution, and switched its number system to base 12. Ten would like "A", and eleven "B", and twelve would be "10". I still think that a base 12 would be better because 12 is evenly divisible by 2,3,4, and 6. Ten only by 2, and 5.

But the OP wouldnt like that because its adding, rather reducing, the 'number of numbers'.

I'm afraid we have to blame the Indians. The counting system in the western world is actually based on the Indian concept of 10,
The concept originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe through the writings of Middle Eastern mathematicians during the renaissance.

From India we also get the concept of zero.

Not the blame, but the credit.

We had to use those Roman numerals (also base five/ten) in the Middle Ages. But the Hindus invented both the zero, and the decimal system. The Muslim Persians and Arabs liked it, and adopted it. And it spread to the whole Muslim Arab world westward to north Africa and Muslim Spain. Then across the Mediterranean Italian merchants began keeping books in decimal in the late Middle Ages, and the "Hindu Arabic system" spread north to the rest of Christian Europe.

The Indian innovation of ones and ohs is not the problem. Its the previously existing base system underneath it. Most counting systems of most cultures prior to the Hindu Arabic system are base five, or base ten. And the blame? Look at your hands. The word for finger is the same as the word for numeral. Digit. Thats what early man counted with.

The ancient Sumerians had a tally system similar to the Roman numerals. But they counted in fives, and ...in 60s. So And odd combination (kinda base five, but kinda base 12). But the upside is that they gave us 24 hours in a day, and 360 degrees in a circle. Good because that means that days, and circles can be easily divided up.

Fun fact: the Mayans and Egyptians independently came up with 24 hour days, 360 degrees, 365 days in a year and using the metre as a unit of measurement.

The Mayans invented the zero independently of the Hindus, and at about the same time.

We need better education in English grammar.  The correct form of your statement is, "We need fewer numerical digits".What advantage does your counting method have over what we currently use?

I dont know where you got your "fun facts" from, but they are all probably BS.

I was gonna say that it was the rival civilization, Mesopotamia, that invented 360 degrees in a circle. Not the Egyptians. Turns out that I was mostly right. Like I said above the Babylonians/Sumerians etc counted by 60s. And Babylonian astronomers did divide up the ecliptic in the sky in into 360 units. Centuries later the Greeks applied that concept to geometry in general by dividing the circle into degrees. And they used the same 360 figure that they got from the Babylonians. So it was Greek modification of a Babylonian concept that yielded our moder 360 degrees in a circle. It had nothing to do with Egypt.

The very idea that ANY culture could have "invented the meter" before it was invented in modern Europe is nonsense. It would mean that they independently hit upon a measurement that was EXACTLY 39.3xyz inches long. Not possible.

It shouldve been obvious to you that whoever told you that was full of it.

But if you're using a little poetic license then yes...in theory another culture might have invented a measurment for length that was in some way like the meter. The modern rival Imperial measurement system (foots, miles, pounds) uses the "yard" which is similar to the meter. Many other cultures have invented yard-like, and meter-like units of measure. But none are exactly the same as either a yard or a meter.

I just googled Egyptian measurement units. Ancient Egyptians used "cubits". Two kinds of cubits both of which were around 53 cm (about 20 inches). A little more than half of a yard, or half of a meter. But they had NO measurement anything like 100 cm ( a meter). So your fun fact is pure poppycock.

I think we should use hexadecimal (base 16) then I can happily count on my fingers:

WOW!

God gave that person ...the finger...two and three extra ones!

Oh there's no fun in in simply presenting one perspective lest this forum becoming a boring echo chamber

Yes I am aware that archaeological science has proposed the cubit is what the Egyptians used as a unit of measurement based on.

But...The earliest written mention of the cubit occurs in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The incomplete text is extant in twelve tablets written in Akkadian found at Nineveh in the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria (669–630? BCE).
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2014/489757/

This leads to an issue, When did the Egyptians say they used cubits to measure their buildings? the answer is they didn't. Much of our knowledge on Egyptian cubits is based on the "concept" of Royal cubit which only goes back to the new kingdom discovery of measuring rods found in the tomb of Tutenkhamun's treasurer Maya. This was used to project that Egyptians used this as the unit of measure but....there is a problem. The Egyptian hieroglyph for the cubit shows the symbol of a forearm. However, the Egyptian cubit was longer than a typical forearm. It seems to have been composed of 7 palms of 4 digits each totaling 28 parts and was about 52.3-52.4 cm in length
...https://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2014/489757/

So is this reliable evidence the cubit was the unit of measure was used to construct earlier structures before the new kingdom?

So here's where it gets interesting.

Around 12,000BC in what is today Turkey, a group of hunter gathers poked their heads outside of the cave they were dwelling sometime after the end of the previous ice age. Out of the blue (and quite inexplicably) these primitive cave dwellers constructed a highly advanced temple structure in a place called Gobeleke Tepe. After construction they used this temple and then inextricably buried the structure?. Lidar radar indicates they were doing this for thousands of years and that earlier temple structures were buried beneath the latest one unearthed that was dated to 12,000 BC which means they were constructing these advanced structures for at least 20,000 years which means they had this knowledge well back into the ice age.

Now what archaeologists discovered is that when later manifestations of tepes were built after 12,000 BC they were inferior structures. It eventually got the point that by 9000BC the local people were basically unable to construct these anymore but made poor imitations in smaller scale and copied the artwork.

The weird thing is that in South America the earliest examples of temple structure by various tribes including (bit not just) Maya showed more advanced building engineering than later structures that seemed to be poorer examples.

This is also seen in Egypt and Sumeria. In Egypt the engineering technology of the great pyramid was imitated in later pyramid but never able to be replicated to the level of advancement. Same with Sumerian Ziggurats.

In the Indus valley there were structures created before Sumeria and Egypt that involved advanced town planning, brick masonry and sewers and drainage (the Indus valley people even had upstairs plumbing). Such technology would never again be replicated in India?

So across the ancient world the level of sophistication and technology didn't evolve but instead went backwards. It was not until after Christ that the Romans started building structures that implemented more advanced technology that the curve went back up.

So how does this answer your original question? well if you go to Egypt, and look at the math used to construct the Great pyramid, it seems they could not have constructed this structure without knowing about metres. Even if they did not use metres to measure units, the structural dimensions of the pyramid can be divisible by this this modern unit of measurement. But how? that's the question I am posing.

All of that text...and it still doesnt answer my question.

Either you're snorting glue. Or you subscribe to the Gaia Network.

Either way you're loosing brain cells, and oughta lay off for a while.

Nobody "discovered" the Meter. Its just an arbitrary unit of measurement invented in France around 1800.

Its not like say, the value of pi. Its not something thats 'out there' for humans to 'discover'.

Its like saying that the ancient Egyptians "discovered the six pack of beer". They might have "independently invented the six pack of beer before it was reinvented in modern times". But nobody "discovered" it.

What you seemed to be saying is that the Great Pyramid of Giza, is like a European import car, its parts were all made in the Metric system. That despite the fact that unlike any and all cars the Pyramids predate the invention of the Metric System. Predate it by around four thousand years.

That would be an "extraordinary claim".

Saying that "the math for building the pyramids requires the meter" doesnt make any sense. The "math" for building your house is the same math regardless of whether the builders used metric, or used imperial. Numbers of units would differ but it would add up to the same house. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the other two sides regardless of whether your measuring in Imperial, or in Metric.

The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km.

All I am saying is that the Egyptians knew about the circumference of the earth. The ancient Egyptian cubit was about 0.5 m (Maya's rods are 523–529 mm) so I am correct that their measurement was divisible by metres if you divide the earth's circumference by approx 50%.

you're last sentence is nonsensical gibberish. Re read it please. See what I mean?

Seriously. Get a grip. "their measurement was divisible by meters if you divide the earth's circumference by approx 50 percent" is meaningless word salad.


Let me help you out.

I think that you meant to say sumpin like this: (a) the modern French invented the meter by defining it as being one ten millionth the distance from the equator to the Pole. (b) The Egyptian cubit is exactly one half of a modern meter. (d) Ergo this distance from the equator to the pole is EXACTLY 20 million Egyptian cubits. Ergo (e) The ancient Egyptians knew the circumference of the Earth as well the French did in 1800.

A) is the one true thing that you have said about the subject so far. Yes that IS one thing that connects the modern metric system "meter" to out there nature. The fact that designers of the Metric system related it to the size of the Earth, by making it to be one ten millionth the distance from the Equator to the Pole (making the earth 40 million meters around).

But (B) is two kinds of BS. Number one - you told me that the Egyptians had the meter. A unit of measurement that was 100 cm. Now you're admitting that they had no such unit of measure, but you're back peddling, and moving the goal post and saying that they had a unit of measure that was eerily similar to ...exactly half of a meter!

But number two- the same problem. They didnt have that either. You show that hey had a cubit that was 53 cm. But "half of a meter" is 50 cm. Fifty and fifty three are not the same number. There is six percent difference. Apparently you're Egyptians thought that the earth's equator has 1500 more miles of length (six percent) than it really has. That would be a huge error. So much for their "knowledge" of the circumference of the Earth.

The Egyptian measurement is about as close to a half meter as a full meter is to the English yard in the old Imperial system. Just a chance similarity. Not even a dramatically close resemblance at all.

But even if you're Egyptian half meter were eerily close to the exact length of half of a meter stick in length then that brings us to (e), bad reasoning. Even if we found that the Egyptians had measuring sticks that were within a couple centimeters of being the same length as modern Meter sticks it doesnt follow logically that that is evidence that the Egyptians "knew the circumference of the Earth". The similarity in the length of their sticks to ours could still be a coincidence. It wouldnt be enough to prove that the Egyptians came up with that measurment length by relating to the size of the earth. Maybe their meter was the half of the arm span of some big dude at that the time. It wouldnt follow that it was evidence that they knew the size of the earth.

Your own data shows that your facts are wrong, and even if your facts were right they still wouldnt prove your point.