Talk:Radix

Merge

Wow, duplicate information.

Even though the history of radix is longer, this base (mathematics) article is longer in terms of article length. Hence I conclude it would be easier to merge radix into here. I have changed the templates accordingly, and started merging.

There is very little in radix to merge; the only part that remains is the part about notation. I don't udnerstand this part, and looking at talk:radix, I'm not alone. I've already merged the first paragraph, which was almost the same as the first paragraph here.

Any help in the merge would be appreciated.

After the merge is completed, I propose that this page be moved (back) to radix and the text be changed accordingly, because "radix" is an unambiguous name whereas "base" is not. This final step is open to discussion, and will only be done after the merge is complete (we still start by merging radix into here beacuse it's easier to do so.) Neonumbers 11:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. I would have done it right away but the previous merge I did someone complained about not giving warning time between tagging. I couldn't believe it either when I saw it -- that duplication of such basic concepts has gone unnoticed as for so long. I also thought about which name would be better and that 'radix' is easier because it's unambiguous, but "Base" is used much more commonly. So despite the extra typing I would go for "Base (mathematics)". —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-01-13 12:36Z

I've merged Radix to Base (mathematics). —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-02-06 09:16Z

There is still a lot of redundancy between this and related articles. --DCary (talk) 01:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

• Base (mathematics) → Radix … Rationale: less ambiguous … Please share your opinion at Talk:Base (mathematics). Ewlyahoocom 20:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

1. Support on the basis of ambiguity. -lethe ^{talk +} 21:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
2. Support to remove ambiguity. Once done, I assume this would become a dab. Confusing Manifestation 12:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
3. Support to remove ambiguity. It might be a pseudo-dab, (list of short alternative meanings, not long enough for even a stub), rather than a dab. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
4. Support - grubber (talk) 17:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 10:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Name of this article

I know this has been discussed before, but it was a binary choice between two options, one too ambiguous, the other too technical.

I would like to propose moving this page to Base (radix), to reflect the most common term and also the more precise disambiguation. Geometry guy (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Merge (again)

I have marked both articles to be merged, again, since it seems like there was a general consensus to merge in 2006... Perhaps this time Radix needs a note at the top about the redirect from Base. LobStoR (talk) 01:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge results

Most of the content of this article was primarily about Positional notation, so I have merged most of it into that article, and merged the contents of Base (mathematics) here. Positional notation is a much broader topic and the details formerly in this article deserved a more thorough treatment in conjunction with what was already in that other article. I think as a result this article is more succinct and focused, and the positional notation article has more depth. Base (mathematics) now redirects here. Dhollm (talk) 23:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, it is much more focused on its topic now - good stuff. I was surprised that someone actually jumped up to fix these articles, I just slapped the merge template on in order to "get around to it when i have the chance." LobStoR (talk) 23:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Fractional bases

This article makes no mention of non-integer/fractional bases. Any particular reason why, or is it just lack of knowledge/use?

Base pi can be fun to play with :)

some stuff on non standard bases on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_positional_numeral_systems
TAOCP2 Knuth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-imaginary_base
base ~1.618 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio_base
-2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negabinary
-3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negaternary

--Luke-Jr 05:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There may be a lack of knowledge regarding a fractional radix, I'm not sure. But there DEFINITELY is a lack of interest. How does one create a fractional base anyway? I wasn't able to create one without creating something called a "step." The step is the number you count by. So if you count by fourths, you can have a base of 1/2. Another interesting thing about having a fractional radix is it can create fractional digits.

Counting with base 3/2 step 1/2 gives the following sequence, where each number is separated by a comma, and certain digits within a number are separated by parenthesis:

0, 1/2, 1, (1/2)0, (1/2)(1/2), (1/2)1, 10, 1(1/2), 11, (1/2)00, (1/2)0(1/2), (1/2)01, (1/2)(1/2)0, (1/2)(1/2)(1/2), (1/2)(1/2)1, (1/2)10, (1/2)1(1/2), (1/2)11, 100...

This sequence translates to the more familiar quantities:

0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9....

So the number two in the familiar base ten step one system is written in the base 3/2 step 1/2 system as (1/2)(1/2). And the number four would translate to 11. Four and a half (4.5) would be represented as (1/2)00, and nine would be 100.

Theboombody (talk) 17:29, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I get different results:

decimal:	0½	0¾	1	1¼	1½	1¾	2	2¼	2½	2¾	3	3¼	3½	3¾	4	4¼	4¾
radix 3/2:	h	h0	1	hh	10	h1	1h	100	11	10h	1h0	101	1hh	110	1h1	11h	111

where h (for half) is more concise than (1/2). —Tamfang (talk) 00:59, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

List of Bases

Should there not be a category Category:Numeral Base or Category:Numeral Radix or something to put all articles into that are articles about a base? (eg. Base 7)... That would help alot, to find info on them I had to just type in "Base X" through the number 50... I finally just stopped when It looked like they were getting sufficiently less written about to be annoying to search for. Anyone know how to make something like this? Leif902 03:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

 Done. We now have category: positional numeral systems. That should list all articles on "Base X" for any integer X, no matter what they are named, including base 60 aka sexagesimal and base64. (I see that "base 100" and "base 256" are occasionally mentioned at Wikipedia, but they aren't listed in those categories because we don't yet have an article about them).

The help page Help:Category lists everything I know about making categories like this. As described on that page, if there are any articles that should be in the list at category: positional numeral systems, but isn't, please add go to each of those articles and add [[category: positional numeral systems]] to the end of those articles.

(The same applies to articles on "Base X" for non-integer X -- such as quater-imaginary base -- which should all be listed at category: non-standard positional numeral systems). --DavidCary (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect Example

The aboriginal base 2 counting example is completely incorrect binary counting. So wrong is the counting that I doubt the validity of the statement that the number system of the mentioned language was base 2. Furthermore, Kala Lagaw Ya doesn't discuss the number system and no reference is cited in this article. If a reliable reference cannot be found, I think that this should be removed from the article. The counting example is frivolous anyway.

Kala Lagaw Ya "Numbers": urapon, ukasar, ukasar-urapon, ukasar-ukasar, ukasar-ukasar-urapon, ukasar-ukasar-ukasar
binary: 0, 1, 10, 11, 110, 111
decimal: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.102.57 (talk) 23:47, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Nope! It means urapon = 1, ukasar = 2. Then it is 1, 2, 2+1=3, 2+2=4, 2+2+1=5, 2+2+2=6. Double sharp (talk) 10:39, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

The number of unique digits...

I don't like how this article starts out stating the radix is the number of unique digits, because later on in the article, the radix is allowed to be more general than a natural number and hence "number of unique digits" makes no sense in the general case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.203.118.146 (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It may seem odd, but even if characters other than 0-9 are used, they're still considered digits if they're used that way; for example, in hexadecimal, 0-9 and A-F are all considered "digits." 28bytes (talk) 20:42, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

That's not an answer. —Tamfang (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

That sentence does have the caveat "for the simplest case". —Tamfang (talk) 21:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

More to the point imho, with a negative or complex base (as mentioned at the bottom of the article) the radix is not the number of symbols. —Tamfang (talk) 01:45, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to change the lead definition to something like "is the ratio of weights between adjacent places," but supect there is a much better word than weights. —Tamfang (talk) 02:03, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

External links

Currently RadixConverter and DigitConvert are linked as external links. While there's not a huge difference, I think the tool I made, Base Convert, is better than the others (it supports bases higher than 36 and floating point conversions unlike RadixConverter). Would it be alright to replace them with Base Convert? Skalman (talk) 22:06, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I won't be following this page closely, so please leave me a message if you want to discuss this. I'm changing the links for now. Skalman (talk) 21:01, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Old page history

I've moved some old page history that used to be at the title "Radix" to Talk:Radix/Old history, along with its corresponding talk page, which can be found at Talk:Radix/Old talk page. Graham87 13:13, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Numeral systems without radix point

Is necessary to add a reference to numeral systems which do not use radix point to represent real numbers. Even an entire article is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.20.129.191 (talk) 01:35, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Duodecimal but not senary?

Duodecimal is not commonly used, neither is senary. And yet duodecimal is allowed on the list, but senary isn't. wtf? Username142857 (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Duodecimal has been discussed (and advocated) much more than senary has. XOR'easter (talk) 23:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Most famous?

Vigesimal is described as 'now most famous in the phrase "four score and seven years ago" in the Gettysburg Address'. Is it? Do we need a source? Is this peacock words? סשס Grimmchild. He/him, probably 13:25, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

It is not vigesimal that is most famous in this phrase, it is "score". D.Lazard (talk) 14:06, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I have edited the sentence for clarify this, D.Lazard (talk) 14:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Your change made the false claim that the only use of this word with this meaning is in the Gettysburg Address. It is easy to find other examples. I undid your change. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)