Re: are numbers boring?

john-paul may (jpm@TWEB.COM)
Sat, 28 Oct 1995 21:25:01 -0600

Traunness sed:

>*yawn* _This_ is getting boring ;>. What if the aliens had nine fingers,
>wouldn't their system of mathematics (though not necessarily the
>FUNDAMENTAL AXIOMS of SPACE-TIME-PHYSICS) be very different?

The number base used (eg, base 10 like more people use, base 2 a.k.a.
binary, base 4 (DNA), base 60 (the ancient, um .. pheonicians I think),
base twelve (Egypt? somewhere), base 11 (I personally use it) ...

doesn't make any difference to underlying number ideas.

Also usually "math" means, lie, functions and stuff.

I think what was under discussion was number theory, ie (basic? profound?)
ideas about Counting Numbers (aka Whole numbers) (like 1, 2, 3 ... not
zero.)

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