rotates him

@calico-catboy

he/they

27, US expat in Toronto, transmasc, chronically ill/immunocompromized, neurodivergent, arospec, nonmonogamous. i guess i'm a furry now? that's a recent development though. i'm not a programmer but i am a computer nerd and a linux user (apparently that's a thing people like to list here).

art page: calico-art

rotates him @calico-catboy4/17/2023, 11:07 PM

Shel @shel

Birdout: Paradise @SomeEgrets4/16/2023, 8:38 AM

saw this getting shared around other sites and I thought it was interesting enough to bring over here:

Inuit children invented their own system for writing numbers which makes arithmetic easier. Now its in Unicode

I think it's interesting to at least... consciously think about things so ingrained like base-10 thinking (the entire SI system is built on it!) and arabic numerals that there's really ever little talk about their merits/shortfalls.

In particular a thing I think is really interesting about the numeric symbols presented here is that as the article points out, simple mathematical operations become almost a form of geometric pattern matching.

I doubt the impact on say, higher mathematics would be significant one way or another, but most people only really engage with simple arithmetic on a casual day to day basis and I can see how an approach to numeric symbols like this could be practical and useful! In particular I sort of casually wonder if there would be any benefits to dysnumeric people to visualize numbers and operations in a form like this?

Shel @shel4/16/2023, 6:11 PM

I love this number system it's so satisfying to use and works so much better for my brain

@calico-catboy shared with:

#alaska #math #language #First nations

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in reply to @SomeEgrets's post:

Zerandal @Zerandal4/16/2023, 5:18 PM

That's pretty cool, I have to say.

fluffy @fluffy4/16/2023, 9:08 PM

This system seems extremely similar to the Mayan number system, which I also always thought was pretty neat and intuitive. I wonder if there's something intrinsic about base-20 and combining marks that makes them easier to brain.

Yaodema @yaodema4/16/2023, 9:16 PM

this is pretty neat, and I hope will make other bases seem more approachable to more people, in addition to making a mark on the world that's been all too rare for first nations groups in the world!

personally, I favor base 8 pretty hard, though I don't use it in my everyday life yet. it just seems to flow way better, would work well with computers without wonky conversion errors to decimal, etc. I've come up with a numeral system for a conlang using base 8, and well, it kinda shares some qualities with this! (much of it is based on stroke count, with a shortcut-shape for 4, and 7 being an odd-one-out because otherwise it seemed like the numeral would get too complicated...)

so yeah, overall it's fascinating to me, seeing what these kids came up with and how naturally it flows. glad to see it get in computers everywhere!