• niartenyaw@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    we’d only be able to represent bases for numbers with one digit though because what does base 15+1 mean? the 15 could be in any base higher than 5. the clearest way would probably be to just represent it with lines or something “base ||||||||||”

    • Ech@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      It’s only 15 to us because we use base 10 (or 9+1). Like how we have 4 through 9, but that aliens in the picture only count up to 3.

      In the case of a mismatch, the culture using the higher base would just translate down (Base 21+1 in the given scenario).

      Single units would probably be the simplest method, but also wildly impractical as the base gets higher. You really want to count each digit just to figure out someone uses Base 100?

    • harmsy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      5 months ago

      Base 16 is typically represented with letters being used as the extra numerals, so it would end up being F+1. Problem solved.

      • niartenyaw@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 months ago

        i know about hexadecimal, but what if you need to refer to a base larger than 16? i’m not saying it isn’t possible to create symbols for every number, i’m saying if you have to describe your base with more than one digit, you encounter a problem of not knowing what base that multi-digit number is in.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          well no, i know, i’m just saying that’s it’s not really that big of a problem, unless you’re using octal, and you skill issue.

          You should design base systems to be independent of each other, and hex does a really good job at this, because often times it’s prepended with 0x to imply hex.