An Excursion in Numbers

By F. Emerson Andrews
Posted by hexnet ::

This article was transcribed by myself for Hexnet.org from a PDF file hosted on the Dozenal Society of America site, and originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, presumably some time ago.

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From the Eskimo counting upon his fingers to the mathematical wizard producing split-second answers with a slide rule, we count by tens. In our critical age, such universality is phenomenal; it cannot be claimed for any religion, code of morals, form of government, economic system, principles of art, language, or even alphabet. Counting is one of the very few things which modern man takes for granted.

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dozenal, numbers, twelve

Twelves and Tens

By A.C. Aitken
Posted by hexnet ::

This article was transcribed from a PDF file originally hosted on the Dozenal Society of America site, reprinted from The Listener, 25 January 1962.

On the case against the system of decimalization

Many people will be wondering why a mathematician should argue against the proposed change-over to decimal currency and the metric system of weights and measures. Surely, they will think, everyone is agreed that the decimal system is the most practicable system in which to carry out both small calculations and large ones? I wish to point out certain reasons why this is not so, and to show that there exists a better system, which in Britain we have in part already, and which, unwisely in my opinion, we are preparing to throw away.

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dozenal, twelve, british nationalism, radices, ten

An Argument For Dozenalism

By Graham
Posted by hexnet ::

Note: Writing about dozenalism always presents some semantic complications. When discussing the natural numbers up to twelve, I have opted to spell out the numbers in English, since this is a clear and base-neutral way of representing them. After trying several different systems, I have settled on writing larger numbers in decimal. Unless otherwise specified, "10" means ten, not twelve, et cetera. When I use dozenal notation, and for clarification purposes elsewhere, I have prefixed the radix as an abbreviation before the number. Thus, "dec. 360" means decimal 360, and "doz. 260" means dozenal 260. "360" by itself, unless otherwise specified, refers to the former. Larger numbers spelled out, where it is stylistically appropriate to do so, will always be given in decimal. My first inclination, of course, was to put all numbers here in dozenal, but on further reflection I see no value in confusing people needlessly. (Confusing them for a good reason though is fine.)

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Tags:
dozenal, numbers, six, twelve, radix, decimal