Re: [HM] base 5

Ed Sandifer (SANDIFER@WCSUB.CTSTATEU.EDU)
Sat, 10 Apr 1999 21:19:04 -0400

Milo Gardner expresses a small degree of increculity:

> The recent post that cited 0-4 counting as base 4 may have meant
> base 5, as Egyptians from the Lower Kingdom may have practiced,
> as Greek may have been told by oral histories.

Yet, I assure you that my citation is accurate. Sturmius,
sometime a little before 1700, indeed invested more than a dozen
pages to the virtues and arithmetic properties of base 4 arithmetic,
and cited both Aristotle and Wallis to back his claims.

I was surprised, too.

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* Ed Sandifer * sandifer@wcsu.ctstateu.edu *
* Professor of Mathematics * *
* Western Connecticut State University* www.wcsu.ctstateu.edu/~SANDIFER/*
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