What if we only had the digits 0-8?

To answer your original question, we wouldn’t have the tragedy of seven ate nine.

We have ten digits because we have ten digits – on our hands.

If we only had two, we’d do math in Binary, like computers, and we wouldn’t know it as being any harder or easier than what we have now, because it’d be what we’re used to.

Magnus; go to bed. You asked seven questions (or was it eight?)

Then we would have a base 2 number system. We would still be able to express every number.

For example, binary is only a base 2 number system but it can accurately express any number.

It can be done.

@ Laureth: It would be much harder to write the problems out though.

the babylonians used 60 digits. this was because 60 is divisible by 12, 5, 4, 15, 3, 20, 2, 30, 10 and 6 (did i leave any out?). the mayans used 20 didgits because they counted on their toes too (not kidding).

its just easiert o count by tens because we’re accustomed to it. if we grew up in central america 1500 years ago, it would be very hard to count by tens.

Nine is not to question why.

“Then we would have a base 2 number system.”

I meant “Then we would have a base 8 number system.”

Back in the day, they made us work math problems in base 8, etc. in grade school. No wonder no one my age is comfortable with math. Although, in California, in 1st grade, I learned about sets and set notation.

@Alfreda – ayup! They don’t make first graders like they used to.

To paraphase Tom Lehrer in “New Math” “Base 8 is just like Base 10, if you’re missing two fingers.”

We’d all be singing, “Eighty-eight bottles of beer on the wall. Eighty-eight bottles of beer…”

For me, it wouldn’t matter one way or another. Even if we only had the digits 0–3, I would still be a math idiot. Thank God for calculators!

I once heard somewhere that a base 12 counting system is actually the most efficient… and the simplest for math, but I can’t remember why… anyway, everything you asked for has been answered I just wanted to ad a little bit of extra info. =)

@Half: 12 is divisible be 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12.
10 is divisible by 1, 5, and 10.

@jcs007… We’d actually have an unanswerable question instead of a tragedy. It would be the seven ate (what)... the world would never know the answer.

Folks, numbers 0–8 is base 9, not base 8. Nine digits.

Our phones could be smaller if we only had 7 digits.

Credit to AlfredaPru: Clear, animated, funny, sung by Tom (Magnus – great for your English) and listen to entire piece to get the last joke.

Tom Lehrer’s New Math

@MrItty – Oh. Right.
Still.
It can be done.

It certainly can be done, and if we had nine fingers instead of ten, we wouldn’t even think it was hard. Ten isn’t special—it’s just what we’re used to.

there would be no flake 99’s….

However, I should add that it would be harder to write one half in base 9. It would be the repeating decimal .44444…

On the other hand, one third would be the very clean .3.

@finkelitis so is that kind of like one step forward one step back :-)

it would be hard but over all i would have to say if the system was set up like that it wuoldnt be to bad
for example we have a base ten system but computers think in a base 2 1’s and 0’s but now some computes think in a base 16 0–9 and a-f, each system would work slightly different but they would work overall the same. but if you would try to transfer from one to the other it would be like converting Fahrenheit to Cecilius difficult but most defiantly doable

“converting from Fahrenheit to Cecilius is defiantly” (sic) not doable.

@gailcalled huh? Subtract 32, multiply by 5/9. How is that “not doable”?