this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
2709 points (96.9% liked)
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
8413 readers
1 users here now
A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Those aliens have 3 fingers. A decimal system to them is like a system based on 14, 196, 2744, 38416, ... would be like to us - probably worse than US Customary
I mean if they had a base 14 numerical system then a base 14 measurement system would make perfect sense.
Contrary to that, the US does use a decimal system for numbers while the various units in the US customary system do not have any common base.
humans have used base 8 count the gaps between your fingers, base 12 count the joints on 4 fingers with your thumb, and base 26 by using lots of body parts.
Number of fingers doesn't have to dictate their number system. If they're using a decimal based number system, then a decimal based measurement system is still the logical choice.
It partially does, the percentage of languages that use base 10 is nearly 100 and most that don't use base 5 or 20... Sure there's others (60 being the main one that still has an effect on most people's lives) but they're vanishingly uncommon
There's no good way to predict what base they'd actually use for their numbers, but there's definitely nothing about 10 that makes it an obvious choice for an inter-species standard line the comic implies.
3, 6 or 12 would be overwhelmingly likely though, inferring from all documented human language families
No, the problem with the imperial system is not what number it's based on. The problem is that it's not based on any number. A coherent base 14 system would be easier to use than the madness that is imperial.