How do bases work in maths? Especially decimal ones.

Question

I can wrap my head around how a base of two would work.

But how would a base of 12 would work? What would come after 10?

**And how would a decimal base work?? that’s even more confusing.**

In: 0

Answer 1

>But how would a base of 12 work? What would come after ten?

The value would still be equal to eleven, it just might have a different name or a new single-digit symbol to represent that value. The difference would be that you could then have an eleven-teen and a twenty-eleven, the same way that you could have a, say, fourteen or twenty-four.

Or if it helps to see it, base 10 goes:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

But base 12 is:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X Y 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1X 1Y 20