this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
1186 points (97.6% liked)

Science Memes

11189 readers
3156 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 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.