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by gorgoiler 1861 days ago
Yes, sorry, my point didn’t come across very well.

What’s quite interesting is to ask pupils to assign numbers to their fingers and thumbs:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... X?

It’s a good way of introducing positional number systems, and the... paradox? quandary? quirk?.. of how base N never includes a symbol for N, and how N in base N is always ‘10’.

See also: asking pupils to divide 12345* by 67, taught in the context of arithmetic and logical shifting.

(*base 67)