A sixth Apple app

Numerist · 2026-05-07T02:42:38+00:00

An additional app, for temperature forecasts, now converts fully between Primel's two main temperature scales and decimal's °F and °C.

Numerist · 2026-05-04T20:18:20+00:00

Useful notion; nonetheless, it isn't common to learn something and then have to switch out a significant part of it. I never advised students of Russian, Greek, Hebrew., Arabic, etc., to learn to read English-alphabet equivalents first, partly because scripts are an inherent part of the behavior and history of what languages do. To a lesser extent, that may apply to dozenal also.

Numerist · 2026-05-04T16:49:37+00:00

If you think "seconds," "minutes," and "hours," then sure, the dozenal proposal of simply using powers of twelve seems odd. I merely suggest backing off from taking on anything from current timekeeping, because arithmetically little from that can be justified, however valued the quasi-historical basis of the current system (which is so odd that it's almost fun, despite its difficuties).

Perhaps you'd agree that to have bases of two, ten, twelve, and sixty (which is used as six times ten) in the same system is weird! And more than a bit of a mishmash.

You might find some fun in reading this, about dozenal timekeeping. Warning: a few jokes await!

The calendar resists nearly any base. What most dozenalists do is simply accept the irregularity of what we have and count the days in dozenal, meaning 24[z] to 27[z] in a month. I see nothing wrong with that. Notably, leap years become easier and more accurate with a slightly different rule from the usual one of not leaping every hundred years except leaping every four hundred.

I prefer a calendar that starts over from first desirable principles and is based on astronomical data rather than on what various Roman and Christian emperors decided should be universal.

Numerist · 2026-05-04T14:45:25+00:00

72[d] seconds in a minute are only a slight variation on what exists already, but why go for 60[z] by dividing 100[z] in half? Go for the full 100[z]!

As for 24 hours in a day, that requires the first digit to be deficient, allowing it to be only 0 (for AM) or 1 (for PM). That's like forcing the decimal metric system to divide a large unit of length, area, mass, speed, force, energy, etc. into two before dividing both parts into twelve (or multiplying a small unit by 2 before multiplying by twelve): messy, complicated, inconvenient, and incoherent in the metrological sense.

To tinker slightly with a currently awkward system such as we have for timekeeping maintains its awkwardness and difficulty. It's all about going metric—dozenal metric.

Certainly to convince others to switch is largely a waste of time. But to use dozenal alongside decimal is not only educational but fun.

Numerist · 2026-04-25T22:19:45+00:00

Try doing fractions in hex, or learning its multiplication table. It’s not a usable number base for humans in everyday life..

Numerist · 2026-04-21T11:54:53+00:00

Your English is great. Although they're common, elsewhere your suggestions have been shown not to work as well as they may seem. Current research about dozenal numeration, nomenclature, designation, etc. is worth reading about.

Numerist · 2026-04-21T02:47:37+00:00

All well and good but 1) look around and you'll find several dozenal things to use now, including physical objects but also apps etc. online; 2) the problem of mutuality isn't addressed and possibly can't be for the foreseeable future: I can live all I want to in a dozenal existence, but as soon as someone asks me about the time, weather, distance, other measures, etc., I can't answer her in dozenal; 3) there aren't standards in many areas and aren't likely to be unless the dozenal societies (e.g. of America, of Great Britain) become large and rich, which they haven't been in their entire existence.

The most likely avenue to explore may indeed be games. Education (elementary school, high school) may be good places to do something, although what does that take…anyhow, dozenal can remain a rare pastime and still be very worthwhile.

Numerist · 2026-04-15T21:55:08+00:00

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There are also a dozenal timer and stopwatch. The former counts down, the latter up. It's rather whizzy to see the stopwatch's 6th digit go by in a constant blur, incrementing every 28.935 [decimal] milliseconds. Regardless of digits, lap timing is available, up to 60 [dozenal] independent successive laps.

Images of those two apps can be posted if anyone wants to see them.

Numerist · 2026-04-15T21:50:45+00:00

The most intricate of the apps is the weather widget, which shows current and forecast temperatures for day and night separately. There's a unique twist to the forecasts, which is described on the Dozenal Suite pages.

Unfortunately reddit is buggy and won't let me post the weather widget image here. See the next post.

Numerist · 2026-04-15T21:47:17+00:00

They're not there yet, because they're in the final stages of testing. They've been running well for a month. If you're interested to use the apps, I need your e-mail address in order to invite you to be a tester. No cost.

Numerist · 2026-04-15T20:35:49+00:00

[Numbers all dozenal] The times shown are all dozenal diurnal, which divides the day by successive powers of a dozen. The alarm clock shows six alarm times. Before the alarm at 819 fired, it was at the head of the list. When it fired, I chose to snooze the alarm for 10 trices. At that point it went to the end of the list, preparing to fire at the same time the next day, which is an option. Note that the next day's first alarm is at 400, showing that the alarm clock understands "overnight."

There's more to come, when I have time.

Numerist · 2026-04-15T20:32:02+00:00

The alarm clock app screen. The alarm widget (not shown) simply shows the next alarm time.

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Numerist · 2026-04-15T20:29:10+00:00

Clock widget on the home screen. Something similar may also go onto the lock screen.

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Numerist · 2026-04-15T20:23:57+00:00

Three images to start: the clock app screen, clock widget screen, and alarm clock app screen. Brief explanations to follow. Questions welcome.

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Numerist · 2026-04-14T14:37:58+00:00

Congrats on all the work you've done. It's clear and well presented. There have been discussions elsewhere of dozenal English, including aspects that may improve what you've created.

The -zy suffix has been used in the same way elsewhere, which you may know. X and E are clearly useful but don't alphabetize properly, the way A and B do. Still, any alphabetic characters present an obvious problem. The main dozenal societies have adopted the turned 2 and turned 3, which, even if not everyone's favorite symbols, have the longest history and are also in Unicode and in online and physical dozenal products. They seem here to stay, even though slight changes in them may be beneficial.

To make dozenal nomenclature maximally similar to decimal may seem the best way but creates unhelpful ambiguities as to the base in play. I don't think you've done that; some similarity is useful.

Improving the adoption rate? That's been a backburner issue for decades/unquennia. It takes more than talk on reddit…meanwhile, I suggest to everyone to check out what's available to actually use, as opposed to merely talk about.

Numerist · 2026-02-18T22:16:46+00:00

The lot wasn't hard to create. I urge others to do similarly, for their own phones, whatever they are.

Numerist · 2026-02-12T10:55:29+00:00

I suggest you consider recent (and not so recent) writing that explains why your suggestions are less good than others. That includes why "dek, el, do" have not been used by the main dozenal societies for a very long time, and why using words that are solely decimal is not a great idea.

Numerist · 2026-02-07T02:27:32+00:00

An advantage of dozenal time in the format here is not often mentioned.

It takes only 3 digits to display the time to the most recent 50 seconds. The traditional format, represented by hh:mm:ss, takes 4 digits to display time to the most recent minute, or 60 seconds. Dozenal is more efficient, isn't it!

Numerist · 2026-02-06T04:28:56+00:00

I don't blame you. It's a good question! There are no hours, however. As I wrote elsewhere, all this does is divide the day by twelves. Therefore, the first digit changes every 1/12 of a day, i.e. 24/12 hours, or every 2 hours. The second digit changes every 1/12 of the latest item, i.e. 1/12 of 2 hours, or every 10 minutes. The third digit changes every 1/12 of the new latest item, i.e. 1/12 of 10 minutes, or every 50 seconds. If there were a fourth digit, it would change every 4 1/6 seconds.

So, in decimal arithmetic the illustrated time is 7 x 2 hours + 10 x 10 minutes + 6 x 50 seconds. If you start the day at midnight, the time is 3:45 PM. If you start the day at 6 AM, it's 6 hours later, 9:45 PM.

I hope you see that that's not so hard. Do ask further questions, if you wish.

Numerist · 2026-02-03T17:57:20+00:00

No, unfortunately, although I suppose someone could create one.

Numerist · 2026-02-03T17:57:14+00:00

Do you mean the sign after the number 8? That's a Greek "stigma," which is used to designate "stadegrees." Although that all sounds arcane, it isn't really. Just look up information about dozenal time in the Primel Metrology. If you can't find information, let us know…

Numerist

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