this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
161 points (94.5% liked)

Dad Jokes

15389 readers
36 users here now

Description

This is a community for sharing those cheesy “dad” jokes that invoke an eye roll or chuckle.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

It just dozen add up.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Base 10 on your hands is really base 1. Every finger is either 0 or 1 and we just count them! Base 12 we do have 12 positions each representing a digit, and two potential digits from our hands.

Binary is so much more efficient because you have 10 digits, just like in base 1, but you use them more efficiently.

The next logical step is trinary, if we can incorporate enough fingers it would go higher than binary. Wikipedia suggests three positions of your fingers - up, down, and somewhere in between, or folded - but I'd be surprised if anyone can realistically do that with all their fingers. However, using four fingers on each hand and pointing them at different knuckles/the tip of your thumb gets you 8 digits of base 4 (including not pointing at the thumb at all as 0).... And actually doesn't tangle your fingers up too bad.