Thursday Thirteen is a fairly popular meme, but sometimes it can be difficult to come up with thirteen things.

However, who says you have to use base-10 math?

In a quaternary math system, for example, 13 would be seven. So, that shaves off six things from your list. You can still call it a Thursday 13. Heck, you can call it a Thursday Thirteen if you want.

You see, people make assumptions. Most people don’t know (or remember) that there are other math systems. As the saying goes, there are 10 types of people in the world: those that know binary and those that don’t.

In base-5 math, 13 would be equal to eight in base-10 math.

Just be wary of hexadecimal, like my last week’s Thursday Thirteen, where 13 is equal to seventeen.

But, even there, you have the advantage. If you want to do more than thirteen, use a multi-decimal math system. Heck, you could use base-20 math where 13 would be equal to twenty-three.

You see, it’s not really cheating; it is thinking outside the box! And, often success depends upon not thinking like everyone else does.

So, stretch your horizons, and those of your readers, by using something other than base-10 math for your next Thursday Thirteen!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 1:14 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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