I’ll be celebrating my birthday in a few days time. I’ll be 17 again!
Yes, I have discovered the Fountain of Youth! The Fountain of Youth that has evaded many explorers and philosophers for ages! The thing is, they were looking for it at the wrong places! The Fountain of Youth is to be found in Math, in Number Theory, in the Base Number System! I was 17 turning 18 when I found out I could remain 17 forever by simply changing the base number system when calculating my age! The day I turned 18 (Base 10), I decided to say goodbye to the Decimal System (at least in computing for my age) and adopted the Undecimal Number System (Base 11) so that I’ll be 17 again. The following year, I adopted the Duodecimal Number System (Base 12), and thus, I was 17 again!
As I approach another birthday, I’ll be 17 yet again. But please, don’t ask me which Base Number System I will be using then.
We are most familiar with the Decimal Base Number System. In grade school mathematics, we can recall that a number has Place Values, i.e., Ones, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, and so on. These place values (1, 10, 100, 1,000) are actually powers of 10, the base of the Decimal Number System.
Other number systems are governed in the same way. For example, in the Undecimal Number System (Base 11), the Place Values are powers of 11 (1, 11, 121, and so on). Thus the number 18 is represented in the Undecimal System as 17. Check out the illustrations below.
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| The Decimal Number System explained. |
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| Behold the key to being 17 forever. |
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