Why does 10 start double digits?
Is there something special about ten which makes it the number which brings us to double digits? - Or did the people who thought of numbers figure 'why not', sort of thing?
If there is a real reason could someone please tell me :D
Thanks!!!
~ Sincerely J.
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Actually, it is kindof a "why not" situation.
What we think of as the value "ten" can be written many different ways.
There are what are known as numeric bases, which are the basis for different numbering systems.
In base two (also known as binary) "ten" is written as 1010. this is because the digit values are different. Each digit value can only be two values, 1 or 0 (hence base two) The farthest right digit is the one digit. the next one from the right is the two digit, the next the four digit, the next eight, and so on.
In base sixteen (also known as hexadecimal) "ten" is written as A.
This is because each digit can be any of sixteen values: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, or F. A equals the value "ten" while B equals the value "eleven" and so on. The value "thirty" in hexadecimal would be written as: 1E.
Base ten, which is what most people use in everyday math, has ten values for each digit, 0 through 9.
We use a base ten number system. That means there are ten digits, starting from 0 and ending at one less than 10, or 9. The places are 10^0, 10^1, 10^2, etc. If there were than ten digits in base 10, it would be possible to write numbers in more than one way (ten would have its own digit, but you could also put a 1 in the tens place and a 0 in the ones place)
In base 2, for another example, there are two digits, 0 and 1. The places are 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, etc.
There's no special property of ten that makes it better than any other number, other than the fact that we have ten fingers and ten toes; computer people (for instance) use bases 2, 16 and sometimes 8 for different things (letters are used for the other digits in base 16).
Because we have 10 fingers our number system is to base 10.
So the maximum unit is 9 and then 1 in another column signifies 1*10.
base 2 ...2 in base 2 is 10_2
base 3 3 in base 3 is 10_3
base 4 4 in base 4 is 10_4
...
base 10 10 in base 10 is 10_10
see the pattern? the reason that its the first number to be reperesented by 2 digits is because you are working in base 10
10 in base sixteen (hexadecimal) is represented as the letter a (Hex)
Because we start counting at 1 and after 9 we had to go somewhere.
So they invented 0 as a place holder and added it to 1 to continue counting past 9.