this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Looks like 0100 rocks to me

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

Took me a moment

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Octal is base 8. Decimal is base A. Hexadecimal is base G. Any questions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What about unniftimal? (Base 37)

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Jesus Christ.

I just realized that we call binary base2 and there's no 2 in that numbering system. We call hexadecimal base16 but there's no 16 (at least not like we know it). But then why is base10 base10? We have a 10...but it's not a single digit number.

Why is this reminding me of Project Hail Mary?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Every base has ten, but it's made of two digits

Binary 0, 1, 10 Ternary 0, 1, 2, 10 ... Decimal 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Hex 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10

Each has the right count of digits for its base before you go two-digit - binary has two (0, 1), etc

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's because we count the 0...... no? 0 and 1, base 2. 0123456789, base 10.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What is this “8” you refer to? Here in the land of people without thumbs, 10 comes after 7.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The alien has 4 fingers, and writes base 4 as "base 10". It's basically just a translation problem.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A base 4 number system has 4 numbers in it: 0, 1, 2, and 3.
After 3 the next numbers are 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, etc.

A base 10 number system has 10 numbers in it, 0 through 9.

Hexadecimal is base 16: 0-9 followed by A-F

The alien using a "base 4" number system does not have a single digit for the number "4". They represent four of something with the number "10", so for them, their four digit number system is "base 10".

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Same here. I read all the comments and still don't understand the joke.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

From the aliens perspective 4 is 10 and it's represented that way so, while having a different meaning, to the alien it is base 10.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I see that but why is it 10 from his perspective? Is it just the fact that the alien would write the number 4 with symbols for 10?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yes, https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/bases.html has a bunch more examples to show why the base of the number system is always represented by 10, because 10 is a short hand we use for d1*b^1 + d2*b^0 where d is a digit between 0 and base-1, and b is the base. b^0 is always one and represents the first digit at the first position. b^1 is the base, so 1*b^1 = the base. And since 10 is 1*b^1 + 0*b^0 it represents the base in any number base system.

Another way to show the same thing with counting:

Base 10: 0, 1, 2, ..., 8, 9, 10, 11, 12...

Base 4: 0, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, ...

Any base: d1*b^0 , d2*b^0 , ..., d(b-1)*b^0 , d1*b^1 + d1*b^0 , d1*b^1 + d2*b^0 , ...

We assume a 1 in the 10's place and a 0 in the 1's represents 1,2,3,...,10 of something instead of 0,1,2,3,10 of something because from our perspective we learned numbers in base 10 with 9 digits, but the alien learned 10 means 4 of something in base 4.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Assuming they use the same numbers then yes, 10 is 10 to us but it represents the separator of orders of magnitude. 10 in base 4 would from our perspective be 4, but ignoring the specific numbers and adapting them for the sake of the joke, the alien would write it as 10 and "base 10" would just be base 4. It's like how hexadecimal uses 0-9 and a-f to represent 16 numbers even though we don't have that many in decimal systems. The joke is a translation issue. I feel like I'm over explaining now though...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago
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