On Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:53:04 -0700, Erik Max Francis wrote: >> In any case, unary is the standard term for what I'm discussing: >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system >> >> although Mathworld doesn't seem to know it. > > Psst. That's a hint. > > Googling for "unary number system" ("unary numeral system" just comes up > with endless mirrors of Wikipedia) gives Wikipedia as hit #1. Hit #2 is > from the Institute of Druidic Technology, another hint. The remaining > hits are pretty much people pontificating in discussion groups just as > they are in this one.
Perhaps you should FOLLOW THE REFERENCES from the Wikipedia article, instead of relying on Google. http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A000042 which in turn points to primary references: K. G. Kroeber, Mathematik der Palindrome; p. 348; 2003; ISBN 3 499 615762; Rowohlt Verlag; Germany D. Olivastro, Ancient Puzzles. Bantam Books, NY, 1993, p. 276. Amarnath Murthy, On the divisors of the unary sequence, Smarandache Notions Journal Vol. - 11, 2000. Amarnath Murthy and Charles Ashbacher, Generalized Partitions and Some New Ideas on Number Theory and Smarandache Sequences, Hexis, Phoenix; USA 2005. See Section 2.12. > Yes, you can define something that works. But it's not the usual > mathematical definition of radix, It's not a radix. I never said it is a radix. Only you and Mensator are confusing it with a radix system, which is *your* problem, not mine. > so if you want to talk about it you > have to disclaim that it's not a proper base and that's you're making up > as you go. But you can't pretend like it's the "obvious" mathematical > meaning just because the usual mathematical meaning doesn't apply, which > is what you seem to be doing. I explicitly gave an example, showing what I meant by unary, because I knew it would be unfamiliar terminology for most people. When my example was ignored completely, I explained further, and showed that it's fairly standard terminology. It is *uncommon* terminology, since most mathematicians don't concern themselves with non-positional number representations, which is why Goggle doesn't find many references to it apart from Wikipedia and copies of Wikipedia. David Wheeler also discusses "base 1", and describes it as "cheating a bit". It's only cheating if you assume you're working with a positional radix system, which tallies aren't. Here's another example, from American Scientist: https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/third-base/2 although that site seems to be having problems now and you're best off with the Google cache: http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:7hlZ33y4uCAJ:https:// www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/third-base/2+%22base+1%22 +numbers&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&ie=UTF-8 [quote] How do you measure the cost of a numeric representation? If you simply count digits, then the biggest base will always win; for example, base 1,000,000 can represent any number between 0 and decimal 999,999 in a single digit. The trouble is, that single digit can be any of a million different symbols, all of which you must somehow recognize. At the opposite pole are unary, or base-1, numbers. The unary representation of decimal 1,000,000 needs only one type of symbol, but that symbol is repeated a million times. (Unary notation is in a category apart from other bases—it's not really a positional number system—but in the present context it serves as a useful limiting case.) [end quote] This really isn't anywhere near as controversial as you guys are making it. Words sometimes have meanings different from what you expect from reasoning by analogy. Get over it. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list