Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
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Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#2I've deliberately chosen a title for this submission that says more clearly what the content is about, and thus helps people decide whether to click through and have a look.
The page's actual title is: "Number Systems of the World"
I don't think that's as informative.
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#3The base 60 Sexagesimal system used by the Sumerians is always an interesting one.
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#4The base 60 Sexagesimal system used by the Sumerians is always an interesting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
> The number 60, a superior highly composite number, has twelve factors, namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, of which 2, 3, and 5 are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified.
It really makes a lot of sense actually.
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#5Wouldn't unary be considered the least complex?
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#6I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97.
According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more complicated than either Huli or French.
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#7I think they're understanding the complexity of the Japanese number system by quite a lot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#8I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97. According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more…
I think it’s implied that base-10 is lowest complexity (this page is for English speakers) and I think that is why base-15 is more “complex” than the weird French system which is mostly addition of base-10 primitives.
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#9I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97. According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more…
yeah came here to say this. Huli seems to be pretty much the same as english except base-15 instead of base-10. It even has the special case of the second 10 or 15 being different in form from the rest of the numbers.
edit: actually it seems like the Huli system is more uniform than English. It doesn't switch up the word order after 15. So it's "15 and 1 ..." whereas english goes "3 and 10.." and then "2x10 and 1..."
Re: Number systems of the world, sorted by complexity of counting (2006)
#10The base 60 Sexagesimal system used by the Sumerians is always an interesting one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
TFA has a section on Assyrian, but that's a decimal system, which made me wonder where the sexagesimal came from. It appears that although Assyrian and earlier Akkadian were written in cuneiform, they are Semitic languages that adopted their writing system from the otherwise unrelated Sumerian language, and apparently didn't bother to adapt the numerals to the decimal system.