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To: Kevin OMalley
12 is divisible by 2,3,and 4. Halves, quarters and thirds are easy to divide. Likewise, 60 is divisible by all of those, as well as 5. This has great advantages in making math simpler and fractions less common. We see its legacy in the day being two 12 hour periods, circles being 360 degrees (making manual trigonometry far less complicated), hours being 60 minutes, minutes being 60 seconds. The Babylonians used all of these conventions, and influenced all of their neighbors. Until the 1700s, most measuring systems, and many coinage systems, used a mixture of 12s and 3s.

10 is only divisible by 5 and 2.

34 posted on 08/03/2005 2:08:00 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: lepton

Ummm, that too.

I think we should stop counting on our thumbs, and go to base 8 myself...


37 posted on 08/03/2005 2:35:28 PM PDT by null and void (Be vewwy vewwy qwiet, we're hunting wahabbits...)
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