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"A base is a natural number B whose powers (B multiplied by itself some number of times) are specially designated within a numerical system." [1]: 38 The term is not equivalent to radix, as it applies to all numerical notation systems (not just positional ones with a radix) and most systems of spoken numbers. [1]
A binary number uses only two different digits, but it needs a lot of digits for representing a number; base 10 writes shorter numbers, but it needs 10 different digits to write them. The balance between those is base e, which therefore would store numbers optimally.
In a positional numeral system, the radix (pl.: radices) or base is the number of unique digits, including the digit zero, used to represent numbers.For example, for the decimal system (the most common system in use today) the radix is ten, because it uses the ten digits from 0 through 9.
For example, "11" represents the number eleven in the decimal or base-10 numeral system (today, the most common system globally), the number three in the binary or base-2 numeral system (used in modern computers), and the number two in the unary numeral system (used in tallying scores). The number the numeral represents is called its value.
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60, [1] is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians , and is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time , angles , and geographic coordinates .
The unary numeral system is the simplest numeral system to represent natural numbers: [1] to represent a number N, a symbol representing 1 is repeated N times. [2]In the unary system, the number 0 (zero) is represented by the empty string, that is, the absence of a symbol.
The number system that results depends on what base is used for the digits: any base is possible, but a prime number base provides the best mathematical properties. The set of the p-adic numbers contains the rational numbers, but is not contained in the complex numbers.
The number n is called the exponent and the expression is known formally as exponentiation of b by n or the exponential of n with base b. It is more commonly expressed as "the nth power of b", "b to the nth power" or "b to the power n". For example, the fourth power of 10 is 10,000 because 10 4 = 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 = 10,000.