• Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Not sure how I would keep track of powers of two with my fingers but base 6 or, my current favorite, base 13 counting is easy enough to keep track.

      In principle you use hands as digits, one hand representing ones the other “tens”. With base 6 you count with fingers normally up to 5 and then 6 is represented on another hand. This let’s you count to 35.

      Base 13 works by counting bones in your digits using your thumb. Like touching finger segment and that representing a number. So one hand can count up to 12 and then 13 is marked in the same manner on the other hand. This allows to count up to 168 (13 * 13 - 1).

      Utilizing all fingers in a binary manner could give 30 bit number (15 finger bones on each hand), but I have no idea how to then keep track of the number using your hands.

      • HeuristicAlgorithm9@feddit.uk
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        22 hours ago

        Powers of 2 is just counting in binary, finger up is a 1 and down is a 0 so highest you can count all the numbers up to and including is 1111111111 in binary or 1023 base 10

      • AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I’m going to say something controversial. You could change your system to base 10, by simply stopping after 9 and using the other hand as the “tens”.

        This could be easier to see at a glance what number you are holding, it should become the industry standard

        • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
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          15 hours ago

          That’s already that I have with base 13, although, that does have more mental math.