Wednesday, September 15, 2021

"New Symbols for Base-16 and Base-256 Numerals" Bested on Reddit

In 2017, I co-authored a paper that presented a system of hexadecimal digits that could be combined as ligatures to form base-256 digits.  It's online here.  In 2019, someone posted a system of base-256 digits on Reddit that I and the other author agree is better: Made a surprisingly simple base-256 numerical system...

In our paper, we enumerated 9 desirable qualities for a set of hexadecimal digits in order to evaluate different sets.   This other system has/hasn't the qualities as follows:

  • MNE: Yes
  • STR: No
  • LIG: Yes
  • AMB: Yes
  • DSP: Yes
  • BIN: Yes
  • 0: No
  • 1: No
  • TRN: Yes
This system has 6 of the 9 enumerated qualities.  This is 2 fewer qualities than our published system, but I nevertheless think it is a better system because 1) its base-256 "ligatures" are easier to write and 2) I can remember how these digits encode binary numbers much more easily than our published system, and therefore this system would be easier for me to use.  Well done, u/Tuckertcs, whoever you are.

On another topic, in our paper we suggested the name "sedecisedecimal" for base-256 numbers.  I still think it's the best Latin/Greek-based name for them.  Would anyone seriously prefer "duocentehexaquinquagesimal"?