Counting the Hard Way • Hacker News Board

Re: Counting the Hard Way

#21

Post by Spivak » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

Qem wrote: post #20

Spivak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base 12! The operations humans do a lot divide by 2,3,4,12 can be done evenly. Your goal is to pack as many factors into your base as possible. They're called highly composite numbers and their big brother superior highly composite numbers. Base 10: 1,2,5,10 Base 12: 1,2,3,4,6,12 Base 60: 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_nu...

Children starting school would not be amused needing to learn 144 entries arithmetic tables. Lots of people were scarred already, starting with a lot of resentment against math due to sheer boredom of rote learning 100 entries tables close when they are first presented to the subject.

Um they already do that, my elementary times tables went up to twelve. Also it's really 72 entries, and let's ignore 1's so it's 60.

Unfortunately you have to memorize your times tables. There's no other way. You can't build number sense without having operations on small numbers in your meat L1 cache.

Re: Counting the Hard Way

#22

Post by brianush1 » Mon, Jun 26, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

Qem wrote: post #20

Spivak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base 12! The operations humans do a lot divide by 2,3,4,12 can be done evenly. Your goal is to pack as many factors into your base as possible. They're called highly composite numbers and their big brother superior highly composite numbers. Base 10: 1,2,5,10 Base 12: 1,2,3,4,6,12 Base 60: 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_nu...

Children starting school would not be amused needing to learn 144 entries arithmetic tables. Lots of people were scarred already, starting with a lot of resentment against math due to sheer boredom of rote learning 100 entries tables close when they are first presented to the subject.

Learning up to 12x12 is commonplace in the U.S., and apparently in other English-speaking countries, too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_table#Modern_ti...

Re: Counting the Hard Way

#23

Post by ttonkytonk » Tue, Jun 27, 2023, 10:45 AM UTC

Qem wrote: post #20

Spivak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base 12! The operations humans do a lot divide by 2,3,4,12 can be done evenly. Your goal is to pack as many factors into your base as possible. They're called highly composite numbers and their big brother superior highly composite numbers. Base 10: 1,2,5,10 Base 12: 1,2,3,4,6,12 Base 60: 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_nu...

Children starting school would not be amused needing to learn 144 entries arithmetic tables. Lots of people were scarred already, starting with a lot of resentment against math due to sheer boredom of rote learning 100 entries tables close when they are first presented to the subject.

In base 12, the multiplication tables are (likely) easier to learn because of the increase in factors (e.g. 3 would be "3,6,9,10,13..." and 4 would be "4,8,10,14..." 8 would be "8,14,20,28..." and 9 would be "9,16,23,30,39...").