The Invention of Number Bases
In their native language, the Bakairi of South America have an additive system for representing numbers:
1 = tokale
2 = azage
3 = azage tokale
4 = azage azage
5 = azage azage tokale
6 = azage azage azage
What number corresponds to "azage azage azage azage tokale"?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Each "azage" is 2 and each "tokale" is 1, so the number is just
2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 9 .