I was chatting this week with my friend who is becoming apprehensive at the prospect of turning 30.
We got onto how the significance only really comes about because we live in a world where things come in tens (i.e. the decimal system).
Now, of course, “age is just a number”, however, the basis for thirty (or rather, 30) being a big deal is because we have ten symbols to denote numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). As such, every increase in ten years/ units seems much important.
Some people advocate for having twelve symbols to denote numbers (for various fairly sensible reasons) which would mean thinking of numbers in 12s rather than 10s.
Whilst it might sound a bit weird at first, this video by an endearingly nerdy mathematician does a good job of explaining the rationale.
Anyway, after watching, we decided that there needn’t be an real importance in turning 30 compared to, say, 27, and so got on with eating dinner.
In other news…
Anyone have any recommendations for other good Youtube channels to follow?
After watching the Maths guy talk about 12 my friend and I watched a few other videos that were a bit hit and miss. I’ve found most of the videos on this channel to be good value: https://www.youtube.com/WendoverProductions
Do let me know if there are any you’ve enjoyed recently/ think are worth subscribing to!
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