Archive for July, 2006
Only eight fingers
“The Octomatics project is about a new number system
which has a lot of advantages over our old decimal system.”
As long as ten fingers (or eight spaces between fingers) is enough to do basic calculation (which is the main reason I don’t particularly like hex math :-) ), I’m a happy camper. Even the proposed written numerals for a base-8 system look very nice:
But the whole concept does raise an interesting question. Let’s say we adopt this numeral system and proceed to use fingers for counting – how could one optimise existing subtraction and addition algorithms with the two remaining fingers?
IMO photos
- official site
- and some unofficial stuff.
Finally managed the workload of the past week and took the time to upload some photos. Couldn’t do it without some good Colombian coffe though.
Thank you, Federico :-).
Back from IMO
Organizers (finally) enjoying a well deserved ice cream at 2.00 AM on Sunday when things were (almost) over in Portorose.
IMO was an exhilarating experience. In the end, it was more than worth all the work and I’d do it all again if I had the chance. I’ve met a lot of great people and I hope to keep in touch with at least some of them.
Will post a link to some photos soon (not just the official ones :-) ).
Off to Portorose
Tomorow I’ll be off to help with organizing IMO 2006. Unfortunately I applied a bit late and missed the chance to be one of the coordinators or guides but it should still be a lot of fun (and loads of work to do).
