Talk:Non-standard positional numeral systems

Article creation

I have addressed certain issues by creating the article Non-standard positional numeral systems, and making related changes to Unary numeral system, Golden ratio base, Quater-imaginary base, Positional notation, Base (mathematics), and Category:Positional numeral systems. I suggest further discussion of these issues takes place here.--Niels Ø 14:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I have now made related changes to Negabinary, Negaternary, Mixed radix and Bijective numeration as well. I'm not quite happy with the development at the category page category:Positional numeral systems - can someone help me with the cat sorting tags used for the non-standard systems? They should appear separate from the standard ones, perhaps in this order:

• Non-standard positional numeral systems
• Mixed radix
• Unary numeral system
• Golden ratio base
• Negabinary
• Quater-imaginary base
• Negaternary

--Niels Ø 21:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

First paragraph

The first paragraph is erroneous and the article needs some Wikification. As the article positional notation indicates, a positional notation system does not contain a base number of glyphs. For example, the sexagesimal system does not contain 60 glyphs—the number varies from two glyphs in Babylonia to fifteen in the Greek form (there are ten in the modern form). But this article is not about standard systems, so I'm not sure whether to correct it or delete it. Wikipedia requires the article title to appear in bold as close to the beginning of the article as possible. You only have This article. This means that the first paragraph should introduce non-standard systems, it should not discuss standard systems first, maybe later. — Joe Kress 05:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the terminology; you may be right. There are 60 different somethings in sexagesimal, but those somethings may not be properly denoted glyphs as they are themselves made up of a number of more primitive somethings. Help if you can see a good solution.

Having the title appear in bold close to the beginning seems a bit silly to me in this case, but I will try to rephrase it to satisfy this policy.--Niels Ø 17:04, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Glyph is unfortunate. Numeral? Sign? Septentrionalis 17:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Symbols? I really don't know - someone, please help!--Niels Ø 21:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Two possibilities, "representations" or "positions", neither of which sound good. An alternative would be to classify the sexagesimal system itself as a non-standard system because it does not use sixty glyphs. Unfortunately, that opens up a Pandora's box because the vigesimal system used by MesoAmerican peoples does not use twenty symbols, rather it uses three: a shell for zero, a dot for one, and a bar for five. I note that the vigesimal article has the same error as this article, assuming that it has twenty glyphs, or at least it only mentions modern respresentations. The title of this article itself is unfortunate. I suspect that whoever invented the term "non-standard positional numeral systems" was only thinking of the decimal, hexagesimal, and other computer systems. It would be quite odd to include both sexagesimal and vigesimal as non-standard when both were invented long before the decimal system. That makes the decimal system itself non-standard because it is so recent. Maybe exclude "classic" numeral systems? Or maybe call these "invented positional numeral systems"? — Joe Kress 19:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Substituting numeral for glyph; if someone sees a better solution, go for it. Septentrionalis 21:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Cultural history vs mathematical idea

I'm quite happy with the improvements made by others to "my" article. There is an issue bothering me, relevant to many of the articles on numeral systems: Some have a focus on the abstract mathematical idea of various numeral systems, and others focus on the cultural history of numeral systems. Many mix these two subject areas, and a clearer distinction between them would improve many of the articles. I don't really see how to do it, though. Quoting Joe Kress above, "the sexagesimal system does not contain 60 glyphs—the number varies from two glyphs in Babylonia to fifteen in the Greek form (there are ten in the modern form)." Now, that's cultural history; in the mathematical ideal sexagesimal system, there definitely are sixty somethings, that now are called numerals instead of glyphs in the article. The word glyph that I originally used was a bad choice, as it puts focus on the physical manifestation, and hence on the cultural history, and not on the mathematical idea I intended.--Niels Ø 09:18, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Neologism

As the originator of this article, I must confess the title was a neologism. However,

1. It seems to have caught on - not only wiki mirrors, but others too now use it.
2. You can see the title of the article as descriptive of the contents, rather than as a generally accepted concept to be described.
3. The little word "here" very early in the intro is meant to indicate that the title is not a generally accepted concept, but only a convenience used "here", i.e. in the present encyclopedia.

Still I wonder, have I sinned here?--Niels Ø (noe) 13:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Japanese article

There's an interwiki link to ja:広義の記数法 - I've no idea what that article is saying, but it clearly has material we don't have.--Niels Ø (noe) (talk) 17:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Gray code?

The Gray code does not currently appear in this article, or in the associated category. Should it do so?--Noe (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Citations?

I've just removed a general citations-needed-tag from the article - I don't think it is relevant.

The article is little more than a brief summary of and pointer to uncontroversial information found in other wikipedia articles; if they lack sources, they should be flagged. (To my knowledge, the only thing that some editors feel is controversial is the inclusion of Unary as a Positional system - but I think that is dealt with in a satisfactory way in the article.)

And if anything in particular in this article lacks sources, that should be flagged.

As can be gathered from the posts above, the title of this article is a neologism, or (as I prefer to see it) a description of something that it was convenient to collect in one place as a separate wikipedia article. Perhaps that idea is challenged by the editor asking for sources for the concept "Non-standard positional numeral systems". Such sources do not exist! (Actually they do now - but only in the multitudes of wiki mirrors and in a few scientific articles that also have picked it up from us.)

Think of this article as similar to the many articles called "List of (blah blah)"!--Nø (talk) 13:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

So the general citations tag is back; I still think it makes little sense. Possibly this article should be renamed to "List of non-standard positional numeral systems"; maybe detailed citations could be dispensed with then. (As I said above, of course the article on each numeral system must be sourced!). I'm not on top of official wikipedia policies on citations and list, but there are load of lists without citations that haven't been challenged. Or is this article too detailed to be considered a list? - Is that why someone feels it needs citations? Please explain! If it is specific statements in the article that bothers someone, please tag those rather than the whole article. -- There's also a new article called List of numeral systems (clearly still work in progress); perhaps it would be a good idea to merge the present article into that list.--Nø (talk) 07:46, 18 March 2011 (UTC)