/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7340956]

When is this base 10 meme number system finally going to die?

Sure Stacey can keep using it to count how many more days until her period but for actual science we need to start using the number system of our universe not some lazy dumbed down human made system based on how many fingers we have.

All the great scientific discoveries are being figured out in some retarded messed up system that will prevent anybody from seeing patterns with nature.

Who else wants to see the dogshit base 10 system die?

[Anonymous No.7340960]

you're stupid

[Anonymous No.7340965]

base 10 is easy for humans to intuitively understand, and it's trivial to convert between bases. There's no reason to change.

[Anonymous No.7340966]

>>7340960

calm down stacey

[Anonymous No.7340970]

>>7340965

but the universe isnt even using a base system. If we really are serious about figuring it out we need to abandon this base meme. Science needs to lead the way.

[Anonymous No.7340975]

>>7340960
>>7340965
why are you feeding him?

[Anonymous No.7340985]

>>7340975

why are you halting the advance of science?

[Anonymous No.7341002]

>>7340956
Which system you suggest?

Also quiz question: Is a base 1 system possible?

[Anonymous No.7341010]

>>7340970
science doesn't use numbers, it uses letters and arrows.

[Anonymous No.7341013]

>>7341002

base: light speed.

[Anonymous No.7341025]

>>7341013
That... that isn't even a number...

[Anonymous No.7341034]

>>7341002

Answer:

[Anonymous No.7341046]

>>7340965
Base 12 is really not that hard to count on fingers like the Sumerians did. I often use it (just moving my thumb costs less energy than moving my five fingers and putting my hands in unnatural positions).

The only problem is that permanently switching to base 12 would imply changing the naming of numbers in every language on Earth (and don’t bring your dec-el-do garbage you saw on Numberphile, it’s ugly as hell and not convenient for big numbers).

[Anonymous No.7341052]

>>7341025

Its the only absolute constant everywhere in the universe. There is nothing better to base it on.

[Anonymous No.7341054]

>>7341013
In a vacuum or what? Light is not constant, dear. It depends on the media in question. Within a particular medium, it is constant though

[Anonymous No.7341058]

>>7341052
That doesn't make any sense because the value attributed to the speed of light is arbitrary.
It can literally be any number if you so wish.

[Anonymous No.7341061]

>>7341002
tally marks are base 1

[Anonymous No.7341078]

We should use base 1.

[Anonymous No.7341081]

>>7340956
We haven't even got rid of 28 days in February yet. It's gonna be a long time before we ever get rid of base 10.

[Anonymous No.7341097]

>>7341052
pi much?

[Anonymous No.7341100]

>>7341061
Is it? The problem is that you only have the digit 0 in a base 1 system like you only have 0 and 1 in base 2.

[Anonymous No.7341104]

>>7341097
>pi is a number
what's its exact value?

[Anonymous No.7341106]

>>7341104
<span class="math"> \pi[/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.7341107]

>>7341106
that's not a number, that's a letter

[Anonymous No.7341110]

>>7341107
It's a symbol and it's as much as a number as 1 is.

[Anonymous No.7341111]

>>7341110
what's it's numerical value?

[Anonymous No.7341113]

>>7340956
you're trying too hard anon and you're not even good at it.
I mean, you don't even come up with a new base proposition, what about the golden ration base ? this would surely rust some jimmies.

[Anonymous No.7341115]

>>7341111
pi.

[Anonymous No.7341116]

>>7341115
no.

[Anonymous No.7341117]

>>7341111
wildberger pls stap

[Anonymous No.7341118]

>>7341111
I think you're asking for the exact decimal value, and there isn't one.
But most numbers don't have an exact decimal value so it doesn't disclude it from being a number

[Anonymous No.7341121]

>>7341116
Do you think decimal representations are the number?
What do you think is the "numerical value" of i?

Do you even know what the symbol 1 represents?

[Anonymous No.7341123]

>>7341118
> most numbers don't have an exact decimal value

[Anonymous No.7341124]

Since this is a good thread to ask, I never understood that stupid portal joke "two plus two in equals ten in base four". No it doesn't?

2^2 + 2^2 = 2^x

x is 3 not 10

[Anonymous No.7341127]

>>7341123
> rationals aren't numbers
> algebraic numbers aren't numbers
> reals aren't numbers
> imaginary numbers aren't numbers
> complex numbers aren't numbers
> hypercomplex numbers aren't numbers
be in denial all you want.

[Anonymous No.7341128]

>>7341124
2+2 = 4 = 10 in base four

[Anonymous No.7341129]

>>7341124
in base 2 the numbers are (starting at 0)
0 = 0
1=1
10=2
11=3
100=4
101=5
110=6
111=7
1000=8 and so on...

in base 4 the numbers are(starting at 0)
0=0
1=1
2=2
3=3
10=4
11=5
12=6
13=7
20=8
21=9 etc

[Anonymous No.7341131]

>>7341124

[Anonymous No.7341134]

>>7341127
i think you didn't understood me, what i say is that every real number have an exact decimal value. Hell, some of them even have 2 exact decimal value ! (if by decimal value you mean the sequence of their decimals)

[Anonymous No.7341141]

>>7341129
Wha? What's the point of that?

So if I wanted to convey to an alien who only knows base 2 that I have (as I see it) 10 apples on the table, I'd say "there are 2 apples"? What if I had 9?

[Anonymous No.7341144]

>>7341134
I guess I meant they didn't have a decimal representation.
You can't write down an infinite number of digits.

Fuck Cantor

[Anonymous No.7341146]

>>7341141
in base 2, 10 would be 1010

[Anonymous No.7341160]

>>7341144

what's the problem with that ? you can't draw a perfect circle either, but that doesn't matter if you have a way to describe it (eg x^2+y^2=1). The same goes for decimal representation.
Take the number between 0 and one which décimals are 1 if the decimale is in a position of a prime number and 0 if not. so it would be
0,01101010001010001010001000001... etc i can't write the whole sequence like i can't draw a perfect circle, but every decimal of this number exists and is perfectly defined. You even have an algorithm to determine if the decimal in position n will be 0 or 1.

and leave cantor alone.

[Anonymous No.7341165]

>>7341160
cont

However if you say that decimal numbers are the numbers with a finit decimal expansion then pi is not a decimal number. But it's still a real number and it still have an (infinite) decimal expansion

[Anonymous No.7341170]

>>7341146
So I would tell him "there are 1010 apples"?

[Anonymous No.7341171]

>>7341160
There's nothing wrong with it.
I was claiming there's nothing wrong with reals like pi

[Anonymous No.7341234]

>>7340970
That's why customary > metric

[Anonymous No.7341247]

>>7341165
This is a perfectly reasonable interpretation given your definitions, which I will reiterate in a little different way. Decimal number are numbers that are uniquely defined by a finite countable number of digits to the right of the decimal place.

Pi can not be represented by a finite decimal, ergo it is not a decimal number.

However, by your definition there are whole bunches of other conceptual numbers not included in your system. e.g. rationals such as 1/3, 1/7, 1/(any prime number >1).

so your definition of decimal numbers has a limitation that excludes numbers that are expressible in other forms (mainly rationals), which generate infinite but repeating decimal numbers. If you include infinite repeating decimals, why not also include infinite non-repeating decimals.

Hence Irrational number are born. Long live Pi. The thing you really should be worried about is are there numbers in the real number line not expressible as a decimal (repeating or non repeating) that are missing. In other words is the real number line complete or are there still gaps that need to be filled in?

[Anonymous No.7341248]

Base 1 is the best.

0 + 0 = 00
00 * 0 = 00
000 * 00 = 000000

[Anonymous No.7341402]

>>7341248
Would you please express 1/2 in your base?

[Anonymous No.7341405]

>>7341402
0/00

[Anonymous No.7341411]

>>7341402
Would you please express 1/3 in your base?

[Anonymous No.7341413]

>>7341405
I mean as point number.

[Anonymous No.7341420]

>>7341405
its called a radix point
1^3, 1^2, 1^1, 1^0, 1^(-1), 1^(-2), 1^(-3),
all equal 1

[Anonymous No.7341423]

0/000

[Anonymous No.7341426]

>>7341413
I think base one is only natural numbers

[Anonymous No.7341427]

>>7341002
>>7341061
>>7341100
>>7341248
>>7341402
>>7341420
So base 1 is impossible?

[Anonymous No.7341431]

>>7341427
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system

[Anonymous No.7341459]

>>7341431
But is't not really base 1. Properly speaking in base 1 you can only express 0 because 0 is the only digit.

[Anonymous No.7341465]

Base 2i, I choose you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater-imaginary_base

[Anonymous No.7341479]

>>7341247
Isn't pi not only irrational, but transcendental? Or am I confusing this with e? According to google:
>A transcendental number is a real number that is not the solution of any single-variable polynomial equation whose coefficients are all integers

So how can we express things like pi or e? Can we express them as a solution to a single-variable equation with NON integer coefficients? Like say the coefficients were irrational? Or can they only be expressed in terms of other transcendental numbers (e^i*2pi=1)? Or are they just concepts (the ratio of the circumference of the circle to it's radius, or the function that is it's own derivative) and can't be conveyed in any numerical way?

We can convey e and pi with infinite series, but are there any other obscure transcendentals that cannot be?

[Anonymous No.7341528]

Damn this thread escalated to get incredibly complicated fast.

I dont even know what anyone is saying anymore.

[Anonymous No.7341831]

>>7341479
yes, pi is transcendental, just like e.
but it's not a problem, you can easily take for definition the folowing :
<span class="math">\displaystyle e= \sum_{k=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k!}[/spoiler] and <span class="math">\displaystyle \pi=4\int_0^1 \sqrt{1-x^2}dx[/spoiler], once you have a proper theory of series and integrals. And this allows you too make numerical approximations as close as you want.

>Like say the coefficients were irrational?
take all the roots (in C) of the non identicly zero polynomial with integer coefficients, we call this set the algebraïc numbers,it's a field and it's algebaicly closed, that is a polynom with algebraic coefficients have all his roots in the algebraic numbers. Since e and pi are transcendental the answer is no.

> but are there any other obscure transcendentals that cannot be?
yes, but it's a little more complicated. First of all, there are numbers that cannot be defined with a finite formulae (which is not the case of pi an e since the formulae i used up in my post are perfectly finite) but i can't find the wikipedia article on them right now...
and also there are numbers that are definite with a finite formulae but that we cannot approximate in a numerical way see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant for example.

[Anonymous No.7341838]

>>7341013
So, natural units?
That has nothing to do with the base of a number system.

[Anonymous No.7341854]

>>7341247
yes, the definition of decimal numbers is quite arbitrary and non natural. this is why it's almost never used. And of course the "right" concept should be the rational numbers.
The problem with decimals expansion is that it's not unique (for example 1,00000...=0,99999... is perfectly true, 1 has juste two decimal expressions) so one try to avoid it as much as possible. But the cool thing is that you can define without ambiguity the decimals of a real number. For example define the first decimal right after the comma a real number x strictly between 0 and 1 to be floor(10x) where floor is the floor function. The second decimal is defined by floor(100x-10floor(10x)) the third by floor(1000x-10floor(100x)) etc... Defined this way decimal expansion is unique but remember that it's unique only because floor(0.99999....)=floor(1)=1 and because with this particular definition of decimal expansion 0.999... would not be the decimal expansion of 1 but we'd still have 0.9999...=1 though.


> In other words is the real number line complete or are there still gaps that need to be filled in?
nope. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_number#Completeness.. The real numbers are the completion of the rational numbers (for the usual metric), there is no gap.

[Anonymous No.7341867]

>>7341831
>but i can't find the wikipedia article on them right now...
there it is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number

[Anonymous No.7342022]

>>7341170
depends on whether your spoken language is based on base 2 or 10.
If you are talking english with base 10, as you normally would, say "10 apples"

But if the language is based around base 2, he will think of 10 things if he heres the word 1010

[Anonymous No.7342055]

>>7341427
Yes, you can only define a base b if the series <span class="math">\sum \frac{1}{b^n}[/spoiler] converges, think about it.

[Anonymous No.7342080]

>>7341052
Science already does that, it sets c=1 for theoretical computations.

[Anonymous No.7343806]

>>7341013
I think you are mixing a numbering system and a speed unit.
Most physicists adimensionalize every speed with c (v/c), so your argument is pointless.

[Anonymous No.7343991]

>>7341248
If I understand correctly then the number of zeros is effectively the value of the number? It's very easy but really impractical for humans as largers numbers are extremely space craving.

[Anonymous No.7343998]

>>7343991
>Scientific notation

[Anonymous No.7344062]

>>7343991
Yes. It's the same reason we leave base2 to computers and logicians. It takes too many digits.

[Anonymous No.7344066]

>>7341459
zero isn't defined, you simply denote absence with absence.
Tallies really are base 1.

[Anonymous No.7344073]

>arguing about conventions.

[Anonymous No.7344236]

>>7344073
>expecting 4chan not to devolve into stupid console wars

[Anonymous No.7344355]

base e would be ideal, but we're too stupid

I vote base 60

[Anonymous No.7344358]

>>7344355
also balanced ternary, sort of same story ad natural base

[Anonymous No.7344361]

>>7341052
Light speed isnt constant, changes depending upon what light us traveling through.

[Anonymous No.7344604]

>>7341100
whats the problem?

0:
1: 0
2: 00
3: 000
6: 000000
10: 0000000000

[Anonymous No.7345069]

>>7341013
dumbass.
okay and HOW do we measure it?
in what "units".
there has to be a preconception.
i love the fact that the Kilogram is no longer measured by "weighting" something, but because of some specific number of a stable isotope of silicon, so it is not affected by gravitational variations/decomposition.

[Anonymous No.7345081]

Base 1 is objectively the best. Easy addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. And it easily maps to real and analog computing.