Hacker News Reader

Base-20 works well on one hand.

Using your thumb, start counting on the first bone in each finger. That gets you to four. Continue with the first joint (8), then the second bone (12), then the second joint (16) and finally the tips (20).

View on HN

makes me think of how to count with the base 60 babylonian number system.

You'd use the thumb of one hand to count to 12 on the phalanges of the other 4 fingers, and keep track of every 5 passes like we would do with the second hand

5 fingers have 14 segments. Using segments on both sides of both hands = 2 sides of 2 hands = 56 finger segment slots. Counting the palms and backs of both hands = 4 hand sides = 60 segment slots and hand sides. Along with the 14 joints on 4 sides = 56 joint nodes = 116 joint nodes, segment slots and hand sides. Including the 10 finger (tips) gets a total of 126 and two arms is 128. Palms, backs of hands, arms, etc. could be further subdivided. Exercise: determine count of combinations.

And 32 with your fingers only, if you use each finger as a bit :)

If you use all 10, you can count up to 1024. :-)

31 really, because a fist is zero. Four also presents a minor difficulty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com