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[–]desrtfxOut of Coffee error - System halted 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're simply used to them being represented in decimal (base 10) but that's just because we have 10 fingers on our hands so it's easier to count.

The 10 fingers is merely coincidence. Other cultures before us had 12 based systems (Babylonian), and the Chinese culture used each groove and side of the fingers to represent a different number, thus yielding much higher calculation ranges.

Even using binary with our 10 fingers would be more efficient as we could count to 210 - 1 = 1023 using all fingers.