#base twelve

MY ALGEBRALIEN OC

my oc. pls treat it kindly. credit if used. she/it

Computer-friendly binary was not the first base system to challenge reigning champ decimal. For centuries, mathy types have cut their teeth on ideas for new number systems. Yet, the possibilities remain surprisingly open--though they throw into disarray all our old habits in arithmetic, base systems are mostly disconnected from deeper mathematical meaning and so escaped the field’s turn-of-the-century systematizing projects. In fact, if you search for details on number system beyond perennial favorites binary and trinary, decimal and hexadecimal, you’ll find one particular source more often than Wolfram or Wikipedia: The discussion forum Dozens Online, dedicated to evangelizing base-twelve arithmetic.

Though it has all the visual charms of a late-2000s ProBoards site, Dozens is still remarkably alive--and, one soon learns, is just the most recent meeting place for the base’s proponents. Spurning the unwieldy “duodecimal” for the catchy “Dozenal,” the Dozenal Society of America dates to 1945 (or 1161 in dozenal), with roots in an informal correspondence group of mathematicians and other fans--such as A.W. Dwiggins, who designed not just symbols for “dec” and “el” (ten and eleven), but the Society’s handsome logo--of a system with some genuine benefits. Beyond those expounded in “Little Twelvetoes,” the many factors of 12 make some arithmetical tasks much simpler, as James Grime of Numberphile explains:

Indeed, they may prefer Grime’s take to Twelvetoes’, considering this response by forum member icarus:

James Grime unfortunately used the do-gro-mo nomenclature system, rendering dozenal very alien.

Why so much talk on non-twelve bases? Simply enough, if you present an alternative to decimal on the internet, you must be prepared to make the case that it is not just better than decimal, but the best of any such system. Criteria evolve--factors, size, complications posed by nearby numbers--and are applied, then extrapolated to ever-more rarefied points. Though twelve usually wins out in the end, the discussions are usually good natured, with much ribbing around the “death of five” hypothesis, the end of the great advantage of decimal over dozenal. They are nothing if not fair-minded, considering even the difficulty of finger-signing in base twelve.

It’s hard to say exactly why this forum has kept up for quite so long--it is, in fact, originally from 2005--when so much of the internet has changed around it. Yet, as the Dozenal Societies of America and Great Britain retain their medium profile so well--a Guardian article here, an io9 post there--it seems there is some magic in Dozenal’s combination of clever ideas, clever people, and a sense of world-turning fun.

So tumblr being down kind of messed up my twelvebration, and my phone still won't post to tumblr so I didn't manage to get any last pictures up after it started working again. But it was super fun celebrating the number twelve because numbers are cool. Also, letters, but today wasn't about that. I leave you with this crazy awesome video from Numberphile.

Someday when I live in my magical and amazing treehouse

I will spend some free time re-aligning my brain into base twelve

And I will laugh at my poor earth-bound friends with their less efficient system of counting