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Dead_Folk_Collective t1_j9xdh42 wrote

My family is Inupiaq!! This is the first time seeing my family’s specific tribe in a post:))

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CreatrixAnima OP t1_j9yby0v wrote

My college students were asked to find a region that we haven’t really discussed in class and look at the development of math. For some reason, one of the groups chose northern Alaska. I had never heard of this before, but I do know that at least one member of that particular group has an interest in indigenous cultures. I thought this was one of the most exciting things! Especially the impacted had on the students abilities to do math.

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WobblyGobbledygook t1_j9wyi20 wrote

Incredible that nine middle school students and their teacher came up with this out of necessity. It is sheer elegance!

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Careful-Prior9639 t1_j9xr8ah wrote

That was a great read. Those numerals are a really elegant way of representing numbers.

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AnchorKlanker t1_ja0sv7m wrote

Well, that's gonna be really helpful and popular, too.

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OldMork t1_j9ygzpt wrote

Good for them, but I fail to see the advantage, computers use binary, hex or 8, 16, 32 bits to count or represent somrething and we use base 10 because its easy to multiply or divide, but base 20?

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nameless22 t1_j9z0tfj wrote

Many peoples and languages across time use base 20 or other non-decimal (12/60 is a well known one).

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CreatrixAnima OP t1_j9yuatg wrote

The benefit is that it falls in line with their language. One of the challenges that the children have is that they don’t have enough characters in base 10 to represent the numerals that they have in their own language. This system allows them to work with the language they already have.

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