Decimals

[EternalOptimist]

Being IT techies, we all understand binary and we all know that we use decimal because we have ten digits on our hands.

But is base 10 a good system to use ? would we have been luckier as a species if we had eight or twelve or some other number ?

[JoJoGabor]

I dunno, ask the SImpsons they have eight fingers

[VectraMan]

I dunno, ask the SImpsons they have eight fingers

I have eight fingers.

[RichardCranium]

It's not a species thing. The Bablylonians (and Sumerians? Phonecians?) used base 60. Others have been used too.

Edit: Wikipedia gives other examples.

[darmstadt]

In my first computing job I had to learn hexadecimal which came as a shock seeing as I'm a complete numpty when it comes to maths.

[Moscow Mule]

would we have been luckier as a species if we had eight or twelve or some other number ?

I'm hard pressed to find a species on the planet who have been luckier than humans.

Except, the dolphins maybe? - and they don't have any fingers

[Diver]

The Phsychlo's used base eleven.
But then again, they had six fingers on the grasping hand.

[xchaotic]

Well any system that's a power of 2 (base8, base16) would be a good combination nowadays as it works well with binary, base10 is problematic because of the 1/3rrds and the rounding errors.
Anyway hex would probably be a good choice for humans as it doesn't get too verbose with moderate numbers.

Since we can't even change the silly keyboard layout that we have for 100 years, I don't think that a number migration could happen without nuclear holocaust as a catalyst