a better way to count on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2018–2025.
explainer · evergreen
jan Misali presents an humorous but earnest case for counting in base 6 (seximal) instead of base 10 or 12, comparing the arithmetic advantages of each.
HN points to it as a funny, convincing take on number bases whenever dozenal or base 6 comes up.
“This video convinced me that base 6 would be even better for simple pen-and-paper math”
5 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Time to link the ConLang Critic's video "A better way to count" where he compares decimal and dozenal (base12) with seximal (base6) and base 6 wins. ▶ this video One of the best videos of number-base related comedy.
in “Show HN: Base32H, a human-friendly duotrigesimal number system” · View on HN
This video convinced me that base 6 would be even better for simple pen-and-paper math, as well as just about everything else: ▶ this video
in “Roman Finger Counting” · View on HN
One of my favorite language Youtubers, jan Misali, has an interesting video on Dozenal and "Seximal" (base 6) number systems. ▶ this video
in “My Love Affair with Dozens (1972) [pdf]” · View on HN
Why are you so obsessed with thirds? If you care about short, clean fractions on a human scale, base 6 is overall better, see this table: ▶ this video Plus you get all the convenience of having five digits on a hand and 5 as the highest counting digit, so you can count to 55 on two hands, and all the rest of the benefits in that (totally serious) video.
in “International System of Units overhauled in historic vote” · View on HN
> " (like you just need to remember 2 more digits) " "The standard among mathematicians for writing larger bases is to extend the Arabic numerals using the Latin alphabet, so ten is written with the letter A and eleven is written with the letter B. But actually doing it that way makes ten and eleven look like they're too separate from the rest of the digits so you can use an inverted two for ten and an inverted three for eleven. But those don't display in most fonts so you can approximate them with the letters T and E which also happen to be the first letters of the English words ten and eleven. But actually as long as we're okay for using the Latin alphabet characters for these digits then we might as well use X for ten like in Roman numerals. But actually now we're back to having them look too different from the other ten digits so how about instead we use the Greek letters Chi and Epsilon but actually if we're using Greek letters then there's no association between the X looking letter and the number ten, so maybe you can write ten with the Greek letter delta instead. And all you really need to learn is those 'two new digits' and you're ready to use dozenal." - Jan Misali in his comedy video on why base 6 is a better way to count than base 12 or base 10 ▶ this video (which is a pisstake and ends up making the point that Base 10 isn't so bad). ("in dozenal, a seventh is written as 0.186X35 recurring because it's equal to one gross eight dozen ten great gross ten gross three doze
in “We'd be better off with 9-bit bytes” · View on HN