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<bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1167543213.802821.253360@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I was just wondering why people tend to use a base 10 number system. I
> can't help but wonder if it is due to us having ten fingers. Anyone
> have any insight into this?
It is definitely due to having 10 fingers.
The reason for base-2 with computers is that it is easier to build an
electronic circuit that is stable in two states rather than in a larger
number of states.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)
Trust me, computers would have been base-10 if the underlying fabrication
technology supported it.
Also, some of the early computers, I think, were base-10 in the sense that a
lot of the instructions were geared towards base-10 operations (even though
the underlying representation is base-2). You find remnants of that even
today with instructions like DAA (decimal adjust accumulator), etc. I'm
just guessing here (and I'm too lazy to look it up), but I suspect that
existing floating point hardware supports BCD operations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal
Other thoughts:
a)The prime factorization of 10 (2 * 5) means that a lot of common fractions
(1/3 for example) can't be expressed exactly as decimal numbers. I wonder
if something like base 2 * 3 * 5 = 30 wouldn't be more logical.
b)It might not be fair with computers to say that they are base-2. In some
sense they are, but in another sense you might say they are base-256 (or
larger). For example, an inexpensive microcontroller can add two 8-bit
numbers in a single instruction and get a 16-bit number (well, kind of,
carry and all that). Similarly for multiplication and division (in a sense,
they have the base-256 addition, subtraction, etc. tables memorized in
silicon). I'm receptive to alternate opinions and ways of looking at that,
however.
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