This makes no logical sense. Calculations of what are more accurate? And as long as one is using integers, there is always a point at which dividing by three leads to an indefinable number, no matter what the starting number is. Now, if one chooses to use other types of numbers--for instance, fractions--many more opportunities for accurate calculations come up. And a whole lot of messiness can be avoided by using pi in one's calculations.
Well 60 has many more factors than 10 and it made calculations easier for a lot of common calculations. That is the reason a clock has 60 minutes and why we sell in units of 12 (a dozen) and a circle has 360 degrees.
> This makes no logical sense. Calculations of what are more accurate? And as long as one is using integers, there is always a point at which dividing by three leads to an indefinable number, no matter what the starting number is. Now, if one chooses to use other types of numbers—for instance, fractions—many more opportunities for accurate calculations come up. And a whole lot of messiness can be avoided by using pi in one’s calculations.
They’re more accurate because you can hold a much larger chunk of a fraction in a base 60 system than in a base 10 system in the same amount of column space. Tables are always approximations within a given space.
Base 10 math is was created so that dumber people could do math. Larger bases are preferable if you have the brain power to work with them.
makes total sense if you see this as a matter of POLITICS and not actual documented history.
Base 60 is not more accurate than base 10. Since the Babylonian’s calculated that a year was only 360 days (which is not bad considering they used a stick in the ground to determine how long a year was) it makes sense to use base 60. The Babylonian’s did not understand geometry or trigonometry, they also did not understand right triangles. They discovered that a 3-4-5 was a right triangle, but they could not generalise their results. Euclid is still the Father of Geometry.
I am working on a paper about right triangles that I hope to publish this year, and I am working on a new class of analytic functions that are related to deformation geometry. I love math!