Is it a stupid idea to have another word for twelve?
Is it a stupid idea to have another word for twelve?
I mean, who thought it'd be good to organize things according to dozens?
Supposedly, Sumerians had their number system based off of the number sixty. I asked my father about it once and he said sixty was divisible by more numbers than ten, so it did sort of make sense. But why would having more multiples be easier?
to the first question, not really; many things have more then one word. According to the dictionary; its mid english, old french and then Latin for 12; though a cursory glance looking at some online site revealed only 1 to also have synonym English word in the first 16 numbers.
to the second point; stop pushing that 10 centric worldview!
The Romans. There was 12 ounces in a Roman pound and 12 pounds in a Roman stone. A carat of diamond is 1/144 Roman ounces. There was 12 lines in an inch and 12 inches in a foot. I could go on if you like. The old myth that you can't multiply in Roman numerals disappears if you know to work in 12s instead of 10s like you were taught.
I thought the problem with multiplying in Roman numerals was their lack of positional notation?
The Sumerians had a weird system that could have been base 10 if they had wanted. They got to 59 by writting 5 ten symbols and 9 one symbols, but instead of writing 6 ten symbol, they put 1 one symbol in the next position. 60 has the nontrivial factors, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, where as 10 only has 2 and 5. My guess that it is because 60 is divisble by 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, they liked it for dividing circles.
You can learn a lot from circles, for example you can use a sequence of circles to construct an approximation of the squareroot of 2.
one, "a", only; two, pair, twin, double; three, tripplet, trine; four ummm... ok, i can't think of any for 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 that are actually used.
Now, riddle me this: why did baker's dozen come about?