Your middle finger is only your middle finger if you also count your thumb as a finger. Which I find hard to accept. @showerthoughts 🖕
Your middle finger is only your middle finger if you also count your thumb as a finger. Which I find hard to accept. @showerthoughts 🖕
Each finger is conveniently split into 3 parts. Using 8 fingers we can count to 24 without resorting to any fancy math.
That’s the point most westerners seem to miss. There are so many ways to use fingers to count, while the one common in Europe the simplest one possible. It’s like demo version, while some other countries get the full pro ultra max edition.
But this isn’t about counting on fingers. It’s about counting fingers. As in, the fingers themselves are what’s being counted when you talk about your “middle finger”.
Fair enough. This was an unnecessary side tangent.
Actually can count to 144 or a gross if you use base 12. One hand for the ones place and the other hand for the dozens.
I’ve always wonder if it was worth the effort of learning base 12 mental arithmetic.
Depends if you’re a farmer or merchant without access to electronics.
Just go base 2 and you can count to 31 without using knuckles
True, although I would put binary in the “fancy math” category.
I wouldn’t. It’s easy, people just haven’t learned it. It takes probably all of a minute to teach someone to count in binary with their fingers.
If they are already familiar with binary, sure.
There are 10 types of people. Those that understand binary and those that don’t.
I’m willing to bet I could teach someone how to count in binary on their fingers who doesn’t know binary in five minutes or less. They don’t need to know it’s binary. It’s just a simple rule that you add one and if that finger is up it instead goes down and the next goes up. They don’t need to know more than that. Then they just work backwards to get the final count. Knowing this is binary can be helpful, but it isn’t a prerequisite.
You have much more confidence in the abilities of an average student than I.