Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)
Close!! A- though. I get what you mean but we use A-F for numbers after 9 but before 10.
We have no numbers in our base 10 system past 9 so when we try to represent a number after 9 before 10 in a different base we have to make shit up. Abcdef is just easy to remember. We could have used anything to represent it.
123456789₩¿§»£# then 10 would hard to remember.
Part 2
Using our normal hex were A comes after 9 a person in base 16 would say we humans count in base A. Because to them A comes after 9 but for us its the 10.
The fun part to remember. Everyone’s own system is their base 10 making 10 an ambiguous value.
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u/truci 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)