Dozenal Society

[Joe Horn]

(01-31-2017 07:33 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  There's really only one good reason to have a larger base: to be able to represent more fractions exactly.

If we all adopted the HP 32SII/33S/35S "double dot notation", then we could represent ALL fractions exactly, using decimal notation. Example: 1+2/3 is entered directly into the 32SII/33S/35S as "1.2.3". Although the RESULT in those machines is not exact, the NOTATION is. Thus instead of writing \[4\frac{5}{6}-1\frac{2}{3}=3\frac{1}{6}\]you could write simply \[4.5.6-1.2.3=3.1.6\]
This would be the best of both worlds; the familiarity of base 10, and the concise precision of fractions in other bases. Bonus feature: HP invented it.