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In Chinese/Japanese, there's 四 rocks in both base 10, and base 4. (8 rocks would be 二四 in base 4).
I think the concept of "base" is easier to understand when you include a numeral for the highest base (10 = 十, 20 =二十).
Of course, arabic numerals are more concise, using position to imply meaning (21 = 二十一).
Doesn't base 4 only go up to 三? Like binary is base 2 and only has 0 and 1. 四 would be base 5.
In Arabic numerals base 2 has 0 and 1, and base 10 has 0 to 9, which is also 10 numeric symbols. Chinese has 10 numeric symbols for base 10, too, just a "10" symbol instead of a 0.
they already said that they have numerals for the base they use. from what I understood, basically imagine we use base 10 but have a numeral for it, let's say X. our numbers go like this:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, X, X1,X2, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, X8, X9, 2X, 2X1, 2X2, etc...
so i imagine it's similarwhen they use base 4:
1, 2, 3, 4, 41, 42, 43, 24, 241, 242, 243, 34...
mind that i have no knowledge on this and I'm only interpreting what i understood from the comment above.
Spot on. Good example! And 十 is indeed just X on it's side :D
But the extra numeral that you're representing with X would be base 11. It's like how hexadecimal uses A-F for 10-15. But the range of numerals still ends at 15 instead of 16 because the 0 exists.
you're conflating number systems. in this number system the positioning doesn't assign value. that's like saying Roman numerals are base 1001 because M.
8 rocks would be 二四 in base 4
ok but what about 16? there's symbols for powers of 10 but not for powers of 4
16 might break it.. 四四 makes no sense as 十十 makes no sense... you'd write 百 (100) instead.
And you get the same problem each time you go higher.
You'd need base 4 equivalents of 100 = 百, 1,000 = 千, 10,000 = 万, 100,000,000 = 億,.
Hmm, on the other hand you can have 十万 (100,000), so why not 四四 (16)? What's 20, though...