GIMME 12
What if there were a better way?
A typical human has 10 fingers and 10 toes, and it’s been like that for a long, long time. So, it’s probably natural that we count by tens—so natural that the decimal system is, by far, the most common way of expressing numbers in both spoken and written language around the world.
In ancient times, polymath Pythagoras and his followers taught that “everything is number.” They considered 10 to be special because it’s the sum of the first four numbers, 1, 2, 3, and 4, and sets of 1, 2, 3, and 4 items can be arranged to form a triangle (like the pins in the bowling alley). To the Pythagoreans, this triangle was sacred. They even swore oaths by it.…