[fmbb]

> Language models trained on natural text learn to represent numbers using periodic features with dominant periods at T=2,5,10.

This proves a decimal system is correct. Base twelve numeral systems are clearly unnatural and inefficient.

[aljgz]

This is just a result of base 10 being dominant in our natural languages. I assume if we really used base 12, things would be different.

What would using base 12 in our natural language mean? Number names needed to be based on 12, not 10. Thirteen, twenty-seven, our numbers have base 10 embedded in their naming.

[dunham]

Historically, quite a few languages were (or are) vigesimal. Perhaps decimal is also unnatural.

[tadfisher]

It's been at least eight score since vigesimal usage was common in English.

It's still used for numbers between 70-99 in French, which is maddening when trying to copy down a phone number as a non-native speaker.

[dunham]

Yeah, I think Swiss French had more? (It's been about four decades since I took French, and high school classes are not very effective.)

[rmunn]

French speaker here. (My native language is English but I learned French in France years ago, and can still speak it with near-native fluency). You're correct. French French (that is, French spoken in France, it's slightly confusing that the language's name and the country's adjective are the same) goes "cinquante, soixante, soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix, cent". In English, that would be "fifty, sixty, sixty-ten, fourscore, fourscore-ten, a hundred". But Swiss French goes "cinquante, soixante, septante, octante, nonante, cent", which would translate to English as "fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred".