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Twelves and Tens

on Third Programme

A.C. Aitken, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, holds that in everyday life arithmetic is largely concerned with small finite numbers and simple fractions, and for such calculations the decimal system is inferior to a duodecimal system.
Professor Aitken is himself a 'lightning calculator,' able to do advanced arithmetic in his head. He has practised in the Babylonian sexagesimal system as well as the octonary, decimal, and duodecimal systems; it is on this experience that he bases his opposition to decimals and his claim that a duodecimal system would be one and a half times as easy and fast.

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Professor A.C. Aitken

Third Programme

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