Things Engineers Like: Bases

While the baseball metaphors for phases of relationships using baseball bases (and other aspects of the game) are a ton of fun and all, bases mean much more to engineers. Of course, I'm talking about bases in the numerical sense; though, chemical engineers may disagree and say bases have a pH higher than seven. But since I'm an electrical engineer, the only base that is valuable is how numbers are represented.

Sadly, most people don't know what base systems are and that we use base 10, the decimal system, most commonly. The reason is probably because we have ten fingers. But if you do know about bases, the other one you may know is binary, base 2 (or if you know anything about how computers work or what digital means). And for many engineers, you've probably had to convert from/to many more bases, commonly octal and hex.

Since the United States of America doesn't use the metric system like the rest of the world, why do we share the same decimal system as the rest of the world? How about the United States becoming a world innovator again and convert to the duodecimal (base 12) system. There are so many benefits. The nation's deficit will have less digits so the rest of the world may think it's smaller than it actually is! 12 hour digital clocks will only need 3 digits instead of 4; think of the economically savings! And with 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in a hour, and 60 seconds in a minute, it would make more sense to use the duodecimal system since 24 and 60 are perfectly divisible by 12. It may even make it seem like the day goes by faster with more flow. And most importantly, since 12 has more factors than 10, there would be less repeating fractions!

But there are challenges ahead if we were to move towards the duodecimal system. We would have to create two new symbols since A and B may just cause confusion and would probably have to change how the numbers are worded since teens and ty's wouldn't make much sense. For those who are old enough to remember Schoolhouse Rock, they explained the duodecimal system and solved the new symbols problem but did not recommend a wording convention.

For those interested, I would recommend looking at The Dozenal Society of America to learn more about Dozenalism.