58 and other Confusing Numbers - Numberphile

Tom: We tend to think that numbers are a universal language

like if there was a

extraterrestrial single the hit Earth, that it would start with one plus one is two

and it would work up from there and work from there and work up from there and then eventually

we're building a machine

opens a wormhole to Vega. And that's a really good idea

for formal mathematics and formal logic it might work...

but the way that humans actually use numbers and we talk to each other it is not

nearly as universal as you might think

I mean I should say I'm a linguist not a mathematician. I've kind of moved over to numberphile

briefly here but to my background's linguistics and the number of ways

that humans use numbers... The number of ways that humans use numbers? Doesn't even make sense...

And you might say okay this there's some weird examples where

English is base 10, but it's not entirely because we still have dozen

which is based 12, we still have Gross, which is 12 times 12, which is 144

that's all base 12 that's duo-decimal we still have 'score' in the language

in the language, we still have 'four score and seven years ago' with Abraham Lincoln

he meant eighty-seven

but 'four score and seven' resonates because we used to have base 20 counting. We used to have

vigesimal, and that still resonates well in the language today. We still have all of that.

I looked up specifically one linguist called Glendon Lean who spent

twenty years touring round Papua New Guinea, Oceania, all kind of south

eastern areas he found languages that were base 6. He found languages that were base 15.

He found all sorts of outliers that you would find if you have isolated populations on isolated islands.

They're not that weird though. I mean you've done a French video before

right you have 'quatre vingt sept' which is four 20s & seven.

That's strange before you even get

outside Europe. Hindi is so irregular

that for the numbers 1 to 100 you essentially have a hundred different words.

There is a pattern in there behind them but the forms are so irregular and they change so

much that you basically have to learn a hundred different words.