[reaperman]

I'd say it's good to be exposed to for a short few lessons at a young age. My friends and I found endless fascination with them and enjoyed inventing our own numbering systems. It helped a lot when I had to think in other bases like binary or hexadecimal, because my perspective had been broadened by roman numerals.

But I'd say maybe not waste too much time on it. Kids will play with whatever they play with, you can lead them to water but cannot make them drink. We just happened to enjoy playing with number systems, and it helped a lot that our school introduced us to several for us to play with initially.

[IggleSniggle]

I taught my son a senary method for similar reasons, and also because hexagons are the bestagons. 12s are quite useful not only for time telling (since they give a nice number of ways to divide an hour) but also for evenly splitting the musical octave, and for counting with flesh between knuckles on one hand.

We do base twelve in our household. It's easier to hold in my head than base thirty-six.

Edit: I was halfway joking but I'm noticing that the 12-hour clock is very elegantly conveyed using base-36 hand gestures. The "hands" of the clock bring in this case literal human hands.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senary#Finger_counting

[zelphirkalt]

It is certainly good to learn, that there _are_ different number systems. Such knowledge can only serve to potentially at some point spark ideas. I see roman numbers as related to a unary system for example. In computer stuff we learn about binary, octal, and hexadecimal representation too (even if they are something else to decimal system than roman numbers are to it). It will not hurt mathematical ability and thought to know such things.