We count in base 10 because we have ten fingers! When you learn to count, your hands are right there, five on one hand and five on the other. So it makes sense that we use ten digits (from 0 to 9) to count everything. If we had six fingers instead of ten, we might be using base 6, like counting with our toes too! It's all about what's easiest for us to use every day.
Examples
- If you have ten cookies, you can count them on your fingers. If you had twelve, you might need to use toes too!
- Adding numbers like 24 + 17 is easier with base 10 because we group things in tens.
- You wouldn’t write '10' as just two digits, you’d know it means ten.
See also
- What Makes a Coin Flip Fair?
- Why Is the Shape of a Pizza So Perfect?
- How Does a Clock Work?
- What Makes Some People Better at Math Than Others?
- How Does a Fractal Work Exactly?
Discussion
Comments (0)
Categories: Math · Base Systems· Number Theory· History of Math · Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.