• frezik@midwest.social
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    11 months ago

    The metric system should be redone in base 12, and RPN should be the norm for teaching arithmetic.

      • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        This is incorrect, and you don’t understand why base 12 is useful. However for binary operations, hex is great. But not for general counting.

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      I like base 12 a lot, but Reverse Polish Notation is a mess when you get up to working with polynomials.

      With polynomials, you’re moving around terms on either side of an equation, and you combine positive terms and negative terms. In essence, there’s no such thing as subtraction. (Similarly, division is a lie; you’re actually just working with numerators and denominators.)

      Reverse Polish Notation makes that a mess since it separates the sign from its term.

      Also, RPN draws a distinction between negative values and subtraction, but conceptually there is no subtraction with polynomials, it’s all just negative terms. (Or negating a polynomial to get its additive inverse.)

      But, yeah. It’s a shame we don’t use base 12 more.

      • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        That’s super interesting. I adore RPN on caclulators and had never heard any drawbacks well-articulated.