Just had a thought a few days ago that I wanted to get some opinions on hopefully from someone who works with machinery.

Anyhow I was wondering about bases higher then 10 and came to the conclusion that while very difficult to use because of memory issues ect that base 100 would be more accurate then base 10.
What I mean by this is imagine if you had a decimal system that had 99 numbers for each digit. Something like 3.(10) (40) (10) (50) (90).
Anyhow I was just wondering if this would actually end up being more accurate or not? I'm kinda assuming it wouldn't really cause the difference is so small but who knows?

No, using a different number base makes no difference whatsoever in accuracy/precision or anything really. Different number bases are just a different way of looking at the exact same data. There are already 100 numbers for each digit, we just call them hundredths, the numbers don't change just because you measure them or write them differently. Computers use base 2 (binary) because its much simpler/cheaper to create hardware that operates with a base-2 number system. Humans use base 10 because... we have 10 fingers and people started counting using their fingers.

There is an argument to convert to a base 12 system because it has lots of factors and makes things like 1/3 * 10, 1/6 * 100 whole numbers instead of repeating decimals. The decimal system is pretty ingrained though and its doubtful another number system will really gain much steam outside of computers.

This post was edited by thenoose on Jun 10 2014 10:48pm

computers use base 2 because they only have on or off.

This post was edited by Ylem122 on Jun 11 2014 12:21am

what would that have with machinery?
and no, the number base used has nothing to do with precision



quite a few number systems have been and are being used
base 12 is quite common, just look at the number of inches in a foot
30 would actually be a better choice because it is 2*3*5
and while binary representation is being used, there is quite some hardware around which works on base 4, 8, 16 or even 32 and 64 (yes, always powers of 2)

I think you are confusing bits with base, or not properly stating that any language that is not binary needs to be brought to binary for it to directly communicate with the computer. Like hex is 16 base, but a computer cant natively understand hex.

Just to flush out why computers use base-2 rather than some other arbitrary base: Computers use base-2 because noise and complexity issues make it very impractical to use analog or higher-base systems. In the early days of computer development, base-3, and even analog computers were created but quickly phased out in favor of binary. The higher base you use, the more sensitive you computer becomes to electrical noise. Also, it's just much simpler to create digital circuitry where you only care whether transistors are on or off, rather than wondering how much current they are conducting. In fact, we have CAD programs and languages (VHDL) that very nicely do a lot of the work for us in designing these large, binary circuits. Analog design is much more complex for similar-scale circuits.

I think I read somewhere that base 60 would be pretty powerful since it's divisible by so many numbers.

why not just take the first n primes and multiply them together then?

base 60 is hidden in how we divide time and degrees on a map



that's the principle idea behind making it simpler but powers of 2 are more suitable due to the digital nature of storage used nowadays
it's far easier and efficient to use processing units using a power of 2 as number base as long as it doesn't get to complex

Not really, computers have low and high. Its much easier to make hardware that only has to deal with two different states instead of three or more.




I'm more referring to an actual base 12 or other number system (or perhaps notation) like hexadecmial that uses a single symbol for all the digits less than the base. A foot has twelve inches in it but you still write it as 12 inches, not 10 inches like you would in base-12.