Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

What you've done is define your own number system, I do not believe you are representing what "base 1" might be.

If a base means, you can write numbers of this form:

abc

Where the value is:

aB^2 + bB^1 + cB^0

and you can only have B symbols, then your one symbol for base 1 would need to be 1, still useless, but not completely:

1 = 11^0 = 1 11 = 11^1 + 11^0 = 2 ...

Note that you cannot represent 0 in base 1 with this method.

If you choose 0 as your one symbol for base 1, then the only number you can represent is 0. I assert this is even more useless than selecting 1 as the symbol.

0 = 01^0 = 0 00 = 01^1 + 01^0 = 0 ...

As far as I can tell, the example was trying to interpret "10" as base 1. 10 has two different symbols which truly does not make sense in base 1.

I assert that base 1 is not a valid base, because you cannot represent all integers in it.

Additionally, the "unary point" or whatever it would be called, would serve no purpose:

1.1 = 11^0 + 1*1^-1 = 2

I'm not sure how that might disqualify something for a "base" but it certainly doesn't help :) Probably the strongest argument is the inability to represent 0.




I had the same reaction as you had, but apparently, OP is correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_1

though you are right that it's not the same as base N, N>1. Also, Wikipedia uses |||| to represent 4 instead of 0000. It makes more sense.


You can represent 0 by absence.

     : 0
  o  : 1
  oo : 2
  ooo: 3
Of course, this is not a practical notation, since 0 would hard to distinguish from actual absence, but it would be viable in some situations: a table of numbers say, where you know that no cells are empty. So theoretically, it is possible to represent 0 in base 1, regardless of its obvious impracticalities.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: