Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
The primary reasoning I've heard is that it's easier to do arithmetic with numbers that are factors of your numeral base and 12 has more factors than 10 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12 vs. 1, 2, 5, 10)
Base 12 seems a little impractical to me since humans have 10 fingers, which makes base 10 easier to teach to children, but it's a matter of opinion i guess
τ is equal to 2π, which allows the formula for the circumference of a circle to be written more concisely (τr vs. 2πr or πd) but complicates most other places where π is used, like in the area of a circle (τr^2/2 vs. πr^2)
My response to the 10 fingers thing is that it's easier to do certain calculations in your head. A lot of those calculations are larger than 10, anyway, so your fingers don't help.
A third of 24 is 8. A third of 60 is 20. It becomes second nature after a while.
One place I used this a lot was 40k. In between rolls, I grouped my dice into sets of 4. When the next roll called for 12 dice, I quickly pick up 3 sets. If it's 10, pick up two sets plus two dice from a third set. Made it really quick to count. At least for the base rolls, a lot of the stats in 40k tend to work in multiples of 4, so this worked out.