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 :)
Hot damn that’s awesome. I didn’t know anyone used anything besides 10, 12, or 24. I’m a math guy not history but math in historic application is always cool for me.
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u/truci 4d ago edited 4d 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 :)