Re: BCD, Binary, ...Binary Coded Duodecimal? Message #5 Posted by mpi on 20 Feb 2013, 3:54 a.m., in response to message #2 by Paul Dale
Thanks Paul
Indeed Decimal is good at exact representations of 1/2, 1/5 & their compounds (hence limiting rounding issues with those, including 1/10), whereas Duodecimal is good for 1/2, 1/3 their compounds.
Those exact representations are convenient to compute exact values, at least in intermediary results.
Agreed exact representation of 1/10 is extremely important for many day to day operations (probably because we have 10 fingers).
Dividing by 3 is too (and 12 BTW in financial cases): one could argue that division by 3 happens more regularly than by 5 in computing.
Just for sake of intellectual curiosity, would a base 30 computing system (taking 2,3,5) provide any benefit?
(yes 5-bit nibbles would be a bad idea...)
Edited: 20 Feb 2013, 3:55 a.m.
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