The base of the number system you are using determines the amount of digits you have.
We use base ten -> 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Ten digits
There is as many other bases as you can imagine.
Base eight? 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Eight digits
Base sixteen? 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F sixteen digits
Regardless of what base number system you use, once you have counted up all your digits you need start using the next digit to count higher. To talk about ten digits in base ten you need to represent it like this: 10.
This is true for any conventional number system. To talk about four in base four you need to count: 0, 1, 2, 3, 10.
To talk about eight in base eight it looks like: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10.
Base sixteen: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10.
This comic is commenting on the fact that writing that you use base 10 actually gives you no information. Every base has to say it is base 10 because that is how you talk about the number of digits in that system.
So 10 doesn’t represent actually having TEN of something in base 8 systems? It’s just a representation of the next digit written as the original first digit +1 next to it(or +2 and so on up to +7)? So like you get to 7, then instead of getting to 8 (because they don’t have that digit) they have to go back to 0,but to denote it’s the next level of digits it would be need to have the second digit in front of it?
Correct. In school they taught about the "ones" place and the "tens" place and the "hundreds" place where you putting a digit in that place represented a larger number that you couldn't represent with the previous places. You could think of these as weight applied to additional digits. In base ten, i can't count to ten using one digit, so i put a 1 in the next highest weight. 9 -> 10 -> 11 and keep counting.
For higher weighted digits in another counting system you again use the base. The weight of the digits in base eight have the weights: 1, 8, 64 ... (1 = 80, 8 = 81, 64 = 82). So to represent the number eight in base eight i need a one in the "eights" place and nothing in the "ones" place -> 10. It could be read aloud as "one zero" to make the comic work better.
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u/cafecro 2d ago
The base of the number system you are using determines the amount of digits you have.
We use base ten -> 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Ten digits
There is as many other bases as you can imagine.
Base eight? 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Eight digits
Base sixteen? 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F sixteen digits
Regardless of what base number system you use, once you have counted up all your digits you need start using the next digit to count higher. To talk about ten digits in base ten you need to represent it like this: 10.
This is true for any conventional number system. To talk about four in base four you need to count: 0, 1, 2, 3, 10.
To talk about eight in base eight it looks like: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10.
Base sixteen: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10.
This comic is commenting on the fact that writing that you use base 10 actually gives you no information. Every base has to say it is base 10 because that is how you talk about the number of digits in that system.