Talk:Hexadecimal/Archive 1

Archive 1

True or not: "Hexagesimal" is a synonym to "hexadecimal"?

The word "hexadecimal" is strange in that "hexa" is derived from Greek six and "decimal" is derived from Latin ten. The original term was the fully-Latin "sexidecimal", but that was changed because some people thought it to be too racy. The correct Greek would be hexagesimal, which some purists use.

The first sentence is OK. The second sentence is true, but "sexidecimal" seems to be used to mean "base 60" more often than "base 16". The third sentence is untrue, because "hexagesimal" (if it exists in English) is composed of a Greek prefix hexa- and a Latinate suffix -gesimal, as in sexagesimus, meaning "sixtieth". A Google search shows that "hexagesimal" is used in Spanish but hardly ever in English, and even then its meaning is divided between "base 16" and "base 60". My conclusion is that there is no word with a pure pedigree that is copper-bottom guaranteed to mean "base 16". -- Heron

Like I already posted at User_talk:The_Yeti#Hexagesimal, 3 July 2007:
The terms "hexagesimal" and "hexadecimal" can't be considered to be synonyms.  The term vigesimal comes from lat. "viginti", eng. "twenty", whereas the term sexagesimal derives etymologically from the latin numeral "sexaginti" that means "sixty". The latin prefix "sexa-" equals the greek "hexa-". Both mean "six".
Thus "hexagesimal" is always synonym to "sexagesimal", never to "hexadecimal". Except by misusage or mistake.
Since User:the Yeti today reverted my good redirect from to the older, bad version. My question to all and everyone: Any new, refuting arguments?
-- Gluck 123 17:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thus I restored today the good redirect Hexagesimal to Sexagesimal.  -- Gluck 123 09:09, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it really strange to combine Greek & Latin in an English word ?

I have been told that Greek/Latin hybrids are actually not so uncommon in English. Off-hand the only one that I can recall, however, is automobile--which in modern Greek is aftokeenito, not using the Latin backend :)

The most well known one to me is television -- User:Karl Palmen.

This theme reprised later at #Greek/Latin. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Alternative Digit Representations

Raul654 has said "In some representations, the characters ~, !, @, #, $ and % are used instead of ABCDEF (respectively). " I'd like to know where?

Is % an acceptable digit?

-- User:Karl Palmen 3 June 2004

An anon contributor added that much. I rewrote it to make it blend into the article better. I'm not 100% sure if the statement is true, though. →Raul654 13:19, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

I was wondering that, too. Marnanel 17:19, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I deleted the obscure figures (~ to %) introduced by User:206.80.111.48 on June 3.
Before reintroducing them, please give sources of their use. Paul Martin 18:48, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've not heard of them before either; but I notice that on some keyboards they're on the shifted E00 to E05 keys. —82.46.154.229 (talk) 03:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The LGP-30 (circa 1957) used the digits 0123456789fgjkqw : reference is the LGP-30 programming manual http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html#R4.13 -- March 21, 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.218.172.170 (talk) 18:46, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Added. Rwessel (talk) 07:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

True or false??

True or false: this word is common because people fail to take notes on whether a prefix is Greek or Latin. The correct sequence from 11-19 is:

• 11. undecimal
• 12. duodecimal
• 13. tredecimal
• 14. quattuordecimal
• 15. quindecimal
• 16. sexdecimal
• 17. septendecimal
• 18. octodecimal
• 19. novemdecimal

66.245.104.133 17:40, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There are many hybrid words like this, such as homosexual. Hyacinth 05:19, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

X'5A3' representation

A discussion at Talk:Newline has reminded me that I run into the notation X'5A3' every so often, in documents such as protocol specifications. (At least, I believe it's a representation of hex literals.)

Does anyone know where it comes from? Is it tied to a particular programming language or culture?

JTN 21:57, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

Update: when Googling it seems to come up in IBM-ish contexts more often than not, and PL/I appears to have this or similar notation [1]. Don't know if it was around before that.

JTN 23:01, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC)

This is the format used in IBM mainframe assembly language, going back to System/360. 206.171.40.13 03:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Table in article - Opera rendering

Isn't the table on the right a little wrong? After 9 in dec, the table seems to be mirrored, and decimal values are listed under binary and vice versa. --Spug 13:03, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. What's your browser? --JTN 14:00, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

I use Opera, and indeed, it looks fine in both IE and FF while Opera flips the table after dec 9. How strange. --Spug 10:17, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But it's preformatted text! (At least the version served to my Firefox, and also the Wiki source.) How bizarre. --JTN 15:16, 2004 Nov 4 (UTC)

I know! Here's a screenshot. I have no idea why that's happening, but at least it's not the article's fault, so nevermind :) --Spug 22:21, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That looks almost like it might be bidirectional script support misfiring. --JTN 10:55, 2004 Nov 5 (UTC)

Yeah... What could be triggering that, though? I've posted a topic about it in the Opera forums. --Spug 11:21, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

any chance of a link to the forum post? Plugwash 23:59, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fractions

Why exactly is hexadecimal "quite good" for forming fractions? I don't see how it's particularly better than any other numeral system. -- Wapcaplet 04:14, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To me, it even seems "quite bad" for forming fractions, since it only has one prime factor, almost as bad as base 10... Κσυπ Cyp   2004年11月6日 (土) 14:30 (UTC)

It is good because not only does 16 have many divisors, but also 16 is one more than 15, which divides into the next two prime numbers after 2 (3 and 5), so one also gets a good set of repeating fractions. For that reason is much better than either Octal (base 8) or base 32. It may possibly be considered better than Duodecimal (base 12) because 11 is prime. Karl Palmen, 8 December 2004

If you wan't to represent as many fractions as possible without reccurance then lots of prime factors are good (so base 10 is better than base 16 in this respect). I can't really say anything about the niceness of recurring fractions as i don't know that sort of maths.

Hexadecimal notation using ABCDEF and IBM?

The article currently has two mentions of IBM as associated with the use of alphabetic characters A to F to represent numbers in hexadecimal representation. Does anyone have a link for a reference that would describe this as a notation first used by IBM? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 05:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Neither Gauss (1777-1855) nor Legendre (1752-1833) used this digits. I ignore if John W. Nystrom – the real inventor of hexadecimal time format (and not Mark V. Rogers of intuitor.com) – already used them. (The same as...)
Before the 20th century, hexadecimal digits are very seldom used and that's why no standard existed. Since IBM adopted this format, it is universally recognised. That's a fact. But surely IBM not used them first. As yet, it's not clearly established who used them first and since when. (1930th?).
Anyone knows more on this interesting topic? 81.57.112.41 15:10, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IBM certainly was not the first to use A-F. Such was in use from the late 1940's through the late 1950's at MIT's Wirlwind Project - a 16 bit binary computer - I joined the project in 1952. Just as an aside, I got to this wikipeda page because I was looking for a better term that "hexadecimal digit" because a hexadecimal symbol is not 'decimal' - is 'nibble' the only alternate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kp2a (talk • contribs) 16:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware (with the help of Google), the only base-n digits that get a special name are binary bits and ternary trits. Beyond that, you either have "digit" which defaults to whatever base you're using in the context, or explicit "decimal digit", "hex digit", etc. In that respect, it's almost serendipitous that hex digits are essentially nibbles. (c.f. Numerical digit) - Matty K 23:26, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

"SHOL"

Since several years the International Bureau for the hexadecimal metric system (SMH) proposes a so-called "omni-literal hexadecimal system" (SHOL).

Could someone provide a reference for this? A Google search for "omni-literal hexadecimal system" turned up precisely one link: this article. A search for SHOL hexadecimal turned up this article first, followed by a lot of unrelated things. I also fail to see how the use of arbitrary consonants for the hex digits is "remarkable, logical and consistent"; the paragraph in question ends "See also the external link below", though none of the external links pertains to this representation.

The paragraph was an anonymous contribution, and I am thinking of removing it unless some supporting evidence appears. I'm open to the possibility that these facts are translated from another language, which would explain the lack of Google hits, but if that is the case then we should remove the claim that this system is receiving "growing worldwide attention" and try to put it in proper perspective. If it is an extremely niche-oriented system, as I suspect, it probably shouldn't be mentioned at all, and certainly shouldn't be included in the table of hex representations as though it were widely accepted. -- Wapcaplet 00:38, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Edit: Should have looked at the French site. Indeed, the anonymous contributor also provided a link to this rather poorly-designed site, in French (with English also available). It appears to me as though this sytem appears in one publication, by one person (or organization). If it has been accepted elsewhere, perhaps we could leave it in the article. If not, it should go. -- Wapcaplet 00:42, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• It's my feeling also that it should go or at least be made much less prominent, but I wasn't feeling energetic enough to research its notability. I note that despite its apparently French origin, fr:Système hexadécimal doesn't appear to mention it. -- JTN 11:42, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)

I think I'll go ahead and remove the SHOL references. If SHOL turns out to be significant, anyone who cares to can pillage the article history and restore it. -- Wapcaplet 17:19, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SHOL proposal & Fractions removal

I think, Wapcaplet, you've acts a little quick. You start a discussion and a few hours later, you erase this very interesting insertion relative to the SHOL. Only one person had time to answer you.

I visited the site of which you deleted the external link. You are right, this is a "rather poorly-designed site". But it's charming and first of all its contents are highly interesting. Unfortunately my French is not perfect, but good enough to understand, that it exposes new things clearly and without blinders. Whoever made it, he should be a great and independent thinker. (Googel ranks this site 5/10, rather good for a young site.)

I think, we should leave the "omni-literal digits" therein. The announcement of this proposal is judicious. This is a "remarkable, logical and consistent proposal". There are many proposals stated on Wikipedia, but this one is up-and-coming. Does someone other want to express his opinion to this topic?

Also your removal of the octal and hexadecimal fractions was as quick as not justified ! At the Octal talk-page you give to understand, that you do not like binary bases and that you prefer the base 12, because "that would be nice considering how common 1/3 is". It's your right to think so! But a page treating the "Base 8" and "Base 16 system" must mention in a few lines its fractions.

-- Paul Martin 03:30, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

SHOL doesn't appear to pass the Google test for notability. The added content made a number of unsupported assertions ("growing worldwide attention", "logical and consistent", "official" this and that) and the evidence for even its existence appears to be only one website (other than Wikipedia). It looks an awful lot like a one-person crusade; Wikipedia is not the place to drum up support. Maybe it could come back if evidence were to be found that someone other than "Michael Florencetime" does anything with it. -- JTN 11:30, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

• The English version of the SHOL site does not appear to me to reveal anything particularly interesting, aside from a few numerological relationships. I am very skeptical of any publication (web or otherwise) that purports to describe some new "universal" measurement that is somehow better than our other measurement systems and should replace them. That the system is hexadecimal in nature doesn't justify extended inclusion in this article; an existing external link is a site campaigning to use hexadecimal timekeeping, but it would be inappropriate to talk about the merits and flaws of that system in this article also. We can't include comments on every oddball interpretation of the hexadecimal system here; the article should primarily cover the dominant usage, with perhaps a small section on these alternative interpretations.
• On the fraction issue: I believe you mis-read the discussion on Talk:Octal; I did not express any disdain for binary (on the contrary, I quite like it). Another user noted the commonplace nature of 1/3. My reason for removing the fractions is that their inclusion seems rather arbitrary and incomplete (why only consider fractions with a numerator "1"? Why include division without including addition, subtraction, and multiplication?) and, for the most part, unrelated to understanding why octal and hexadecimal are useful. The inclusion seems especially odd considering that neither system is very well-suited to working with them.
• You say that we must mention fractions in a few lines for these systems. Why fractions, and not, say, square roots, powers, or primes? I think we should concentrate on the techniques that are actually useful in these systems, particularly the ways they are useful in computer science (and in their relationship to the binary numeral system). I would not be opposed to having discussion of fractions, as long as it's part of a more thorough mathematical treatment. -- Wapcaplet 20:37, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is obvious that this article "hexadecimal" is not the place to explain hexadecimal timekeeping and its differences (16 H/d or 2×16 H/d?). Concerning the SHOL proposal, let's deepen later.

On the fraction issue: "Why include division without including addition, subtraction, and multiplication?" Because all these operations are delivering integer results (sometimes perhaps negative integers). A basic multiplication table might be interesting, but at present is not top-urgent.

The binary system and the hexadecimal system is quite the same. (Octal is an obsolete system with several disadvantages, whereon – here – I'll not dwell on.) You know as me, that in informatics, values always have "data types": signed byte, unsigned word, signed doubleword etc. That's the raison why many pocket calculators parse integers in hexadecimal divisions and neglect the fraction part. Therefore many persons – even some computer scientists think – hexadecimal fractions don't exist. They are at fault! Understanding the binary (or hexadecimal) floating point format helps to comprehend why. For abolishing implicitly this misapprehension, the presence of hexadecimal fractions in this article is essential.

Recurring fraction parts are not a problem, quite the contrary, are an advantage. (Short and finite fraction parts are certainly still better.) But the advantage of an identified recurring rule is, that your number is a number exact and not a rounded one. 1/3 showed as 0.3, where is the problem? As we know 1/6 = 0.16 in decimal, we will learn that's also 0x0.2A. It's easy to memorise. 1/3 = 0x0.5 since 5×3 = 0xF. Surely, even in decimal, not many individuals know that 1/7 is 0.142857. But for 1/0x5 and 1/0xA, no problems: Equal 0x0.3 and 0x0.19 respectively. You see, hexadecimal system is as "well-suited" as the decimal one. (Excepting the ugly mixed-digits and the need of the prefix "0x".)

"Why only consider fractions with a numerator "1"?" You are right. Perhaps someone makes another pretty table, not too large, including values like 2/3, 3/4 or 4/5. But this are only additions of the existing fractions.

"Square, roots, powers, or primes?". I don't like long useless listings. Hexadecimal calculators exist. Prime numbers are independent of bases! But some constants (pi or e) and often used values like square root of two, perhaps one day, can be mention.

"...as long as it's part of a more thorough mathematical treatment." Except the "bitwise logical operations" in limited "data types", there is no difference between hexadecimal and decimal arithmetic. Simply we forgot to swot our hexadecimal multiplication tables.

What do you think of?

Finally, it's true, I "mis-read". Another user wrote it. I wonder: You, contributing to "programming languages" etc. preferring "Base 12"? (Though, it's not a "bad base", but future belongs to hexadecimal. Also ancient weights and measures are often multiplied or divided by 8 or 16.) Excuse me for the mistake.

-- Paul Martin 14:26, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"If at first, an idea doesn't seem crazy, then there is no hope for it." Albert Einstein.

Hi, it's me the "oddball". (I take it with humour.) Paul Martin informed me by email with a link up to here. I studied the history... and nice to find you here discussing my SHOL proposal.

But stop! – Before we can begin any discussion, it's absolutely necessary, that either you support your term "numerological" by any quotation you want or But stop! – Before we can begin any discussion, it's absolutely necessary, that either you support your term "numerological" by any quotation you want or you will retake it very formally.

-- Michael Florencetime 16:40, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Before I respond, keep in mind that I am basing my reaction on the English-translated portion of your site only, since I do not know French. I used the term "numerological" because of the way in which the hexadecimal system of length is derived. If I understand correctly, these measurements (league, stade, chain, aune, etc.) are wholly derived from Earth's circumference, using various divisions by four or powers of 16. It appears that the reader is expected to perceive some cosmic order in these measurements, when their only real relationship is to the Earth's circumference (a figure that can only really be measured to within several kilometers, and which is rather fuzzy by virtue of the fact that the polar circumference is some 70 km less than the equatorial circumference). That the hexadecimal length system has an internally logical organization of units has little bearing on whether the system could be useful or practical. The metric system may appear equally arbitrary, but at least some of its units are based on natural phenomena.

However, those issues are beside the point; the contention here is whether SHOL should be included at any length in this article. Has this proposal been adopted by any standards organization, or is it being used in a practical way by a significant number of people (say, more than 10)? Is there any publication, aside from your website, that describes the system and its applications? If not, I'm sorry, but I just don't see a place for it here. -- Wapcaplet 07:27, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Wapcaplet for replying. I will soon answer you. -- Michael Florencetime 11:48, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

---

Nice edit by Plugwash; that old definition is certainly better than mine was. Sorry, I didn't dig enough into the history to find it. Poweroid 18:33, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Generally if you see an otherwise good article with a missing intro it means that there has been vandalism in the past and it somehow slipped under the radar. Wikipedias watchlist system is unfortunately very good at letting vandalism get covered up :( Plugwash 14:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Errors in the multiplication table

Error in the hexadecimal multiplication table. D x 7 does not equal 4B, it should read 5B. Also 5 x 6 = 1E, not 2E - M.S. 7th March 2006

Yes, it was wrong, so I uploaded a screenshot of one of my own pages to replace it. MathsIsFun 23:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Counting hexadecimal on the fingers.

I've noticed that it is possible to count hex on the fingers. You can use the thumb to count the fingertips and joints of the other four fingers of one hand. With two hands you could count base 32 or even 256. Linguofreak 02:13, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed:

You confuted the last argument, that seemed to speak for the decimal system : )

Greetings, Lipedia (talk) 17:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Conversion vs. Representation

Hexadecimal is just a way to represent a number. This article seems to have a significant bias toward indicating that a number is somehow different in different representations and needs to be converted.

I think it should be made extremely obvious that hexadecimal is one way to represent a number, and the representation can be converted to other representations. I've removed the section that describes computer converting a number to binary and hexadecimal.

-- Lakin 23:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Verbal hexadecimal "Ax...Fx" pronunciation system?

I've never heard of this, and a quick search turns up no other descriptions of this system (eg. Pronouncing the hex digit “A” as “aye-ecks”). Unless this is actually in use significant use somewhere, the section would be identified as a proposal, rare or just deleted. Rwessel 00:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but I didn't encounter it in a basic undergrad education in Computers. That and the info in question seems to have been added by an unregistered user (01:54, 12 October 2006 168.61.10.151 if you want to look it up in the history), and it pre-dated the rest of the content. It's probably been left in place just out of habit, when I'd guess it was just one person's opinion. A tentative second from me(pending, ofc, a good source for the info). At the least, we should probably make the section smaller, a mention rather than an in-depth explanation. --Spyforthemoon 20:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Order of Sections

I rearranged the sections to try to group into logical areas (math, representations, &c...) I'm probably going to be combing through things more finely in the next few days, but wanted to get any opinions on this change first.

Particularly, is the Converting from other bases section unique from any other base-to-base conversion? If not, shouldn't we just point back to the Radix#Conversion_among_bases section? I agree that the Mapping to binary is importantly unique, but the general case doesn't seem to be. The subsections in Converting from other bases also seem to be unnecessary repetition of the generic base information. If I don't get any objections, I think that section should be axed. --Spyforthemoon 20:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, pointing to the common page on radix conversions is a good idea, perhaps leaving on one or two line quick description of converting to/from decimal since that's a specific (and common) case. Unfortunately that page (or at least that section) is terrible. In attempting to present the subject in an extremely simple way, it ends up being almost incomprehensible. The discussion of the relationship to binary is important to keep, IMO. Rwessel 09:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Colour Chart is copyrighted?

©2007 Jayden Carr appears in the text below the chart. Is this a legitimate claim? - Bevo 21:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Unicode

Why has Unicode not separate code points for the Latin letters A-F and the hexadecimal digits A-F? --88.76.251.169 13:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

What an excellent point.

Although one could ask why Unicode has not separate code points for the decimal digits 0-9 and the hexadecimal digits 0-9? - Matty K 23:37, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Because character spoofing (for instance capital A = capital Greek Alpha) is a big enough problem as it is, that's why. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.70.50.117 (talk) 10:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a really useful namespace!

I'd like to add to the "Other common uses" section the fact that the possible characters are all visually distinct. Unlike e.g. ASCII, where lower-case-ell and number-one can be easily mistaken for each other, hex digits are all unambiguous. Handy for places where arbitrary (non-heuristic) data must be entered into a computer -- it's larger than binary (so more can be encoded in less space) but with no namespace collision (to help humans). A nice example of this is encoding Ethernet MAC addresses or 802.11 security tokens in hex. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alephant (talk • contribs).

I have unprotected the article, feel free to expand it. -- ReyBrujo 15:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Original use of hexadecimal

The article states that hexadecimal using U-Z for the additional digits originated in 1956. It was actually in use before that. The earliest use that I'm aware of was on the SWAC computer, which used hexadecimal (with letters U-Z) in 1950. It had a 36-bit word (plus sign and breakpoint bits)used to hold 4 8-bit addresses (it had 256 words of memory) and a 4-bit op code.

--69.181.81.27 06:14, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

"Strain" Hex Pronunciation System?

While it's claimed to be "A new and fast growing way of pronouncing HEX numbers," I've not heard of it, and a few quick searches produce no relevant hits. Unless this is actually in use significant use somewhere, the section would be identified as a proposal, rare or just deleted. Rwessel 06:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It should be deleted. mimithebrain 18:39, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

C family notation

"The leading 0 is used so that the parser can simply recognize a number, and the x stands for hexadecimal (cf. o for Octal and b for Binary)." This seems to suggest that 0x denotes hexadecimal, 0b binary and 0o octal. While the first two are clearly the case, is there any language that prefixes octal numbers with 0o? Our own Octal article only states 0, not 0o. -- Jao 14:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Haskell, for example, allows 0o (zero-oh) to introduce octal sequences. OTOH, only 0x is valid in C/C++, 0b is less common, and 0o is rare, at best. I have altered the section to reflect that. Rwessel 01:25, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Recent versions of Python allow all three. —82.46.154.229 (talk) 04:07, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The table

As I write this, the article currently has a simple table with the decimal and binary equivalents of the hex numbers 0 through F. A new table was added by an anonymous editor and reverted by Slady, and re-reverted by the anon. Up to that point nobody had given any rationale. I agreed that the old, simpler table was better so I restored it again with a more meaningful edit summary.

The new table uses the hex-subscript notation which has previously been cast out of the article with the comment "This is not place for developing new notations". It also uses the letter L as the digit representing 1 in the binary column, a usage which I find quite bizarre. Some people from the era of manual typewriters might still think l and 1 look alike (although in any decent font they should be distinguishable), but extending that equivalence to the upper-case L is something I've never seen before.

The anonymous editor submitted a defense of the new table at my talk page, which includes some heavy stuff about a tesseract.

Now that I've summarized the action so far, the questions are:

1. Is the new table preferred by anyone other than its creator?
2. Is the subscript-hex notation really used in any citable sources, or was it made up by wikipedia editors?
3. What is the deal with the L's? Seriously.

--tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I am the anonymous editor and this is the section I wrote and just deleted at T...´s talk page. My central argumentation is that the nibbles belong to groups that should be made visible:

---

	0hex	=	0dec	=	0oct		0	0	0	0
	1hex	=	1dec	=	1oct		0	0	0	1
	2hex	=	2dec	=	2oct		0	0	1	0
	3hex	=	3dec	=	3oct		0	0	1	1
	4hex	=	4dec	=	4oct		0	1	0	0
	5hex	=	5dec	=	5oct		0	1	0	1
	6hex	=	6dec	=	6oct		0	1	1	0
	7hex	=	7dec	=	7oct		0	1	1	1
	8hex	=	8dec	=	10oct		1	0	0	0
	9hex	=	9dec	=	11oct		1	0	0	1
	Ahex	=	10dec	=	12oct		1	0	1	0
	Bhex	=	11dec	=	13oct		1	0	1	1
	Chex	=	12dec	=	14oct		1	1	0	0
	Dhex	=	13dec	=	15oct		1	1	0	1
	Ehex	=	14dec	=	16oct		1	1	1	0
	Fhex	=	15dec	=	17oct		1	1	1	1

	p	AND	q		F	F	F	T
	p	AND	¬q		F	F	T	F
	¬p	AND	q		F	T	F	F
	¬p	AND	¬q		T	F	F	F

	p	OR	q		F	T	T	T
	p	OR	¬q		T	F	T	T
	¬p	OR	q		T	T	F	T
	¬p	OR	¬q		T	T	T	F

	p	XOR	q		T	F	F	T
	p	XOR	¬q		F	T	T	F
	¬p	XOR	q		F	T	T	F
	¬p	XOR	¬q		T	F	F	T

The vertex first projection of the Tesseract forms a rhombic dodecahedron, which is the hasse diagram of the partally ordered set of all sixteen nibbles:
The eight nibbles with an odd number of bits form a cube and are marked in silver.
The two double bit pallindromes 0110 and 1001 (compare XOR and NXOR) are projected in the center of the rhombic dodecahedron and are marked in gold.
The other six nibbles with an even number of bits form an octahedron and are marked in bronze.

	q		F	T	F	T
	¬q		T	F	T	F

	p		F	F	T	T
	¬p		T	T	F	F

	false		F	F	F	F
	true		T	T	T	T

Hello Tcsetattr,

what do you concider to be wrong about this table?

The red squares are more intuitive than pure numbers ever could be, especially they make easily visible which nibbles are complements, and also the coloured lines contain information of mathmatical relevance.

The question "what the L´s stand for" is not serious. Binary numbers with an L as one dont need a ₂ or _bin to be clearly defined.

I expect its the coloured lines that seem strange to you, so I give the explanation in the diagram on the right and in the logic tables above. I dont want to go into group theory, so I trust your intuition and think you will see, that some nibbles are closer related to each other than others.

These groups might be of no importance for you, but in boolean algebras like the set logic they are essential.

There may be a place in wikipedia for your tables (they look good), but it is not this article. This article could refer to and link the article that would have your tables. The colours of the numbers including yellow for 6 and 9 need explaining. I suggest you look through the mathemetics pages to find such a place. There may already be such tables there. Karl 09:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

---

Searching for material verifying the (0,L) standard I often found the name of Konrad Zuse, so e.g. in his patent application Z391 [[2]] from 1941 this notation is used. In pure mathmatics the L is quite unknown,so formulas like L + L = L0 seem to be not in use, but in informatics it´s quite usual to write 0L0L XOR 00LL = 0LL0 as the following links indicate:

[[3]] [[4]] [[5]] [[6]] [[7]] [[8]] [[9]] [[10]] [[11]] [[12]] [[13]]

Greetings

de:user:Tilman Piesk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.123.110.214 (talk) 16:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't help noticing all those .de suffixes. Perhaps the L is common in German sources. This is the English wikipedia though, and here it stands out as weird-looking. In fact if you look at our Binary article, you'll see there is no mention of the L=1 notation, but if you then follow the link to its German equivalent, it is mentioned there. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 19:30, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed; I also wondered that I found only one english link [[14]] using the L. I thought it´s because I searched with google.de, but it´s not. Well, the L´s are not important, so I change them for the english Wikipedia. The logic tables are now in (F,T) instead of (0,1); I think the white and red squares make sufficiantly clear, that it is mathmatically the same.
What I concider to be important is only to visualise the groups and their connection to the rhombic dodecahedron shaped hasse diagram of the sixteen nibbles poset.

I tried to include a headline like in the other table, because most theoretically its not clear anymore that the right column is binary, but it looks horrible (because it enlarges the table in the width). I hold it to be self explaining, that the right column can be nothing than binary, if not, a short hint should be given in the text. Greetings de:user:Tilman Piesk

---

This table appears to be back again. I agree that the old table is clearer, although if someone wanted to add an octal column, I wouldn't object.

I also don't see the relevance of the Hasse diagram.

Rwessel (talk) 09:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Unless someone objects, I will remove the Hasse diagram as irrelevant, at the end of the week. Rwessel (talk) 06:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

---

The Hasse diagram has returned again. It is, IMO, irrelevant to the subject at hand. The relationship between bit patterns and logic functions is not uninteresting (although its relationship to hexadecimal in particular is marginal and coincidental at best), and should probably get its own page. The author has offered to justify the reintroduction. Rwessel (talk) 09:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

padding and readability

a little padding around the table under the "uses" section may improve readability, but whatever. --Emesee (talk) 23:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

No History Section?

There is a history of usage of base 16 that predates the twentieth century - it would be good to record some of it.

For instance, many Tibetans count on their fingers using base 16 notation (typically using the tip of the thumb as a marker, counting off the joints and tips of each finger from the base of the index finger through to the tip of the little finger, and using the second hand in the same manner for the count of sixteens. For example, the 0xA8 may be represented with the thumb of the left hand on the second (from the palm) joint of the ring finger (10x16), and the thumb of the right hand at the tip of the middle finger (1x8) = 168. Practices differ slightly - some start from the tip rather than the base - and others count the phalanges/ head of metacarpals rather than the joints/tips, though everyone starts at the index finger (1-4) and moves to the little/pinky finger (13-16). Like most finger counting methods, there is no notation for zero. Rarely, monks will use the same methodology, but for counting in decimal only (and ignore half the ring and the entire little/pinky fingers).

I have seen many Tibetan monks from a variety of regions, as far east as Amdo and Kham and as far west as Ladakh, who are familiar with this counting method. I don't know if the usage extends to non-monastics, or if it is known to other cultures in the region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.6.250.44 (talk) 13:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

History passing back a long way

I was perusing one of the odder entries in Websters online http://www.websters-dictionary-online.com/Un/Underclay.html , which has a section for "alternative orthography" that includes a section for "Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s)" ; so it appears that someone thinks that use of (a) hexadecimal notation goes back to the 770s. I'm not an etymologist, so I'm not sure how to follow this up, but it does strengthen the case for some linkage to the appropriate parts of etymology and linguistic history. If they exist in WikiPedia.
Watching this page, because I'm not sure how to proceed. Aidan Karley (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Intuitor Hex Verbal Representation?

Unless someone else has heard of the Intuitor Hex Verbal Representation system (there's a link in the links section) in some sort of actual usage, I suggest this be deleted. Probably the link should be removed as well. Rwessel (talk) 05:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Links to hexadecimal advocacy sites

I think there is value in the links to advocacy sites (one of which is mine to make biases clear). When I originally became interested in hex systems I used the other (advocacy) links to gain more info. I have a few people each day hit my site from wikipedia, which would indicate some sort of interest. All three of the advocacy sites have no revenue generators (google ads, etc) so I think it's safe to say that wikipedia is not being taken advantage of. (This is not the case for a couple of the hex converter links by the way)

while I understand people labeling florencetime.net as crackpottery, it's a sincere and interesting attempt to unify units under a hexadecimal system. It's not the way I would do it or present it but I think it's a valid link.

Anyway, I added a bit to the article about hexadecimal system advocacy. Not much but all I have time for today. Hopefully it will lend a little context to the advocacy links and vise versa. Hauptmech (talk) 02:19, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

(by the way...)

I created this userbox: User:Lipedia/hexadecimal

Feel free to use it ... Greetings, Lipedia (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Fractions (again)

Are the fractions correct? 0.8h is obviously 1/2, but isn't 0.1h 1/16? Didn't check the other fractions. This needs attention.
217.132.28.10 (talk) 12:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

All the numbers there are hex. You're using a decimal 16 in "1/16". Check the others and that would be clear, since 1/A through 1/F are in the list. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Overhaul

I boldly cleaned up the article, particularly the lead and leading sections. I realize that might be stepping on some toes, but hopefully only little toes. It looked like the article suffered from layer after layer of edits focused on clarifying or making more precise a small passage without regard to the overall flow and organization. Alas, I ran out of steam near the end and might have made a couple items worse. Glancing back at it, I see that the various computer language examples aren't set off against additional explanation very well. Maybe that should be made into a table?

Also, there seemed to be several passages which considered a particular point of view to be universal. Hopefully that is remedied. And what was with the sentences that said there have been movements for X, but X hasn't done too well. That's like saying it's not notable, isn't it? —EncMstr 09:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Verbal representations - Lojban

I don't think Lojban (an artificial language with a population of users described as "The current number of Lojban speakers, although indeterminable, is much lower than for Esperanto.") is significant enough to reference in this way, except, perhaps, in a trivia section. So unless there are any objects I will revert this addition in a week or so. Rwessel (talk) 19:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Greek/Latin

"The word "hexadecimal" is strange in that hexa is derived from the Greek έξ (hex) for "six" and decimal is derived from the Latin for "tenth". It may have been derived from the Latin root, but Greek deka is so similar to the Latin decem that some would not consider this nomenclature inconsistent." I'm confused. 75.118.170.35 (talk) 13:03, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not strange, it's just ISV. ISV never hesitated to blender up some Greco-Latin. Greek and Latin were the 2 most important classical languages of art and science for many generations of educated [Western] moderners, who studied both and coined ISV coinages using bits from both. See also Neo-Latin. (Also, Greek and Latin share plenty of cognation anyway, and the Romans were influenced by Greek culture, so the blendering goes even deeper.) I toned down the "strange" idea in the article. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Where did 0x come from?

0x, 0b, 0o, 0 etc. What's the history of these symbols? 71.167.73.243 (talk) 04:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The first place I know of is the C (programming language) from the early 1970s. It's quite possible those were borrowed from somewhere else less well known. Most languages before then used postfix notation, such as 123 (decimal), 123H (hex), 123B (octal, Kronos Fortran). This is more complicated and potentially ambiguous to parse since languages like Fortran ignored spaces. X=12 3B * 1 0 H is the same as X = 123B * 10H. —EncMstr (talk) 00:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The rationale behind the prefixes is that numerical constants should start with a digit (0..9), regardless of the base. That distinguishes them syntactically from, say, variable names and keywords. -- Elphion (talk) 22:45, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Difference between 0x08F79152 and just plain 08F79152?

I just wanted to know, what the difference is between the two.

0x08F79152 and 08F79152. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.168.19.135 (talk) 23:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The context in which they exist matters greatly. For example, if both were written in a C program as constants, the first would be understood as 8f79152_hex while the latter would give a compilation error. Alternatively, if they were present in an Intel 8086 assembler program, the first would probably give an error and the second would be understood okay. —EncMstr (talk) 23:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Base Notation

Whatever notation is used, number or text, I think it needs to be consistent throughout the document. I also think that some simple key of the form:

• bin = 2
• dec = 10
• hex = 16
• oct = 8

would make the article more user friendly for those who are not familiar with what "dec", "hex", "oct" mean (especially those for whom English is a 2nd language). I will go ahead and add the key. --stmrlbs|talk 18:57, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Using named subscripts for base notation reduces the problems associated with such things as $123_{16_{10}}$. You and another Some editors have been removing "hex" in favor of "16", which I believe to be a mistake, but I haven't reverted. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:22, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The only change I made to base notation is to add "hex" base notation where there was none before [15]. Personally, I do prefer the numbers, but that is just because that is how i am used to using them. But, I don't care which is used here, but I think what the different notations mean should be noted somewhere in the article. --stmrlbs|talk 20:18, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The only bases that are used in this article are base 10 and base 16 and as this article is named 'Hexadecimal' it's kind of obvious that _hex refairs to base 16 and then that by the process of elimination _dec must mean base 10. I don’t believe this note that you put in the lead should be there as a list of what notation is used for each base should be put in the article about radixes if at all. Robo37 (talk) 19:48, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you can assume that because something is obvious to you, that it is obvious to the world. I understand about the different bases, number systems, but I've tutored enough students to know that it doesn't hurt to put a few notations of what means what, especially when you are using a certain notation throughout a document. However, I could put the key at the bottom instead of in the lead. Perhaps that would be better. --stmrlbs|talk 20:18, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for looking after this. I haven't read through carefully in some time, but the article itself explained _hex notation once upon a time. —EncMstr (talk) 05:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Representations of real numbers

Do we really need the lengthy tables of hex representations of fractions and irrational numbers? I think an explanation of the concepts of non-integer hex plus a modest number of examples should suffice, and I'm tempted to wipe the rest. Does anyone object? 86.138.104.18 (talk) 23:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC).

Yeah, this section has really gone overboard. The one thing that gives me pause about just scrapping it is that finding this information elsewhere is non-trivial, especially since most calculators don't do reals in hex. Perhaps we could spin it off as a separate article: Real constants in hexadecimal. Elphion (talk) 02:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I would vote for spin-off rather than oblivion. Good idea. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:35, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps a page, or collection of pages, listing various constants in various bases. There is a (shorter) "real numbers" section on the Binary numeral system page, as well as a few examples on the Sexagesimal page. Rwessel (talk) 03:42, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to do, but if split, there is no reason to use "Real" in the title. See Mathematical constant for an example table, and be prepared to argue why WP:INDISCRIMINATE does not apply (that is, a separate article may be hard to justify). One thing that should be removed from the table is the stuff like "(≈ 1.414)" (redundant, and visual clutter). Johnuniq (talk) 03:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

If it's a table of various constants in various bases, a separate article is justified - where else should it go? (I'd be more worried about WP:NOTABILITY!)--Noe (talk) 09:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it belongs in this article in view of the difficulties mentioned. However, I don't think it should be as prominent in the article as it is. Perhaps the last section before the MOS standard tailing sections? —EncMstr (talk) 17:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I tried that, although I thought it should be before the "Cultural" section. Let's see. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That seems an improvement. Perhaps some additional rearranging: I think the Powers section should go before Real numbers. Cultural seems fine where it is. —EncMstr (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• I still can't picture why anyone would want or expect to find this information in an encyclopedia. The number of people who actually want to know the hex equivalents of these numbers must be vanishingly small. Any such poeple would, I imagine, be working on some arcane research or programming task and would be capable of working it out for themselves. 86.152.241.219 (talk) 03:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

I cannot disagree with you, but there are likely to be lots of people who don't realize that hex (or binary for that matter) can represent fractions, so it's quite cute to show that hex can give the value of reals. I'm inclined to keep the table. Johnuniq (talk) 04:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, my post wasn't very clear. I completely agree that the concept should be explained, along with a couple of representative examples. I'm not arguing against that, I just don't see the need for quite so much of it. 86.152.241.219 (talk) 05:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC).

Hex floating point was not something covered in any of my computer science classes. It wasn't until I hit the real world where I needed this, and it wasn't anywhere to be found. I agree this is not a typical subtopic for layman interest in hexadecimal, but there is plenty of unlikely or arcane information present on Wikipedia: like this, this, and this. Like there should be. —EncMstr (talk) 04:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree -- this is not too arcane for WP, which has become my first (and frequently only) stop for computer-related information. I agree with 86.etc that plopping all those constants in the middle of the article is distracting for the general reader, but I would like to see them remain available in a separate article. Agree, too, with remarks above that the *notion* of "decimal" fractions in hex needs to be covered here. Elphion (talk) 20:34, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Verbal representations - syllabic system

Need of reference?

I added here pronunciation based on ou, ki, bi, u syllables - someone showed it to me a quite some time ago and later somebody else knew about it too. That's all know - I have recently searched about pronunciation of hexadecimal and found literally nothing (just some pages of proposed pronunciations by fans), so I added it here - it's virtually impossible to "find" or "give" reference to any verbal usage by smaller group of people (try to give reference to some dialect word which you and maybe thousand people around use) - the only thing you can do is to document it if you don't find it. I wouldn't bother, if something similar was mentioned, but it wasn't - it isn't "some other similar ad-hoc system" and works differently than verbal representations introduced before, so in my opinion it should qualify at least as example of other verbal representation class.

Plus the system is in fact quite practical - it's very natural when dealing with conversion hexadecimal-binary (especially registers) - I had always problem write down directly what B, or C is in binary until I have learnt their verbal equivalences - B is oubiu, C is ouki - what directly translates to 1011 and 1100 and it looks handy when dealing with long numbers with one or two hex digits like 0400 0000, which is ki ekibia (literally four and six zeros). 90.178.37.35 (talk) 08:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a matter of weight and verifiability. WP is not an indiscriminate collection of minor facts, and this must be about as minor as they come. You need to provide something to convince us that this is anything other than a prank, or some private usage. Your point about the practicality of the system (which is not self-evident, and certainly open to debate) does not really address whether it should be included in the article. Elphion (talk) 14:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ignoring the question of weight and whether it's a prank, unless you have a reliable independent source, this does not belong in wikipedia. (I often write things in wikipedia without sourcing it, but I know that if someone challenges it, I either have to supply sources, or to let it go.) Wkipedia is NOT a deposit of information not found elsewhere.--Nø (talk) 17:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

There's an octal system in Frederik Pohl's The Coming of the Quantum Cats; I still don't know if any of these syllabaries are notable, but some of them do exist. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Mini table hex<->bin conversion

Hello, I created a mini table for the conversion hexadecimal<->binary using the coordinates x,y it's easy to use and memorise. So I thought this might help someone; Public Domain, the external link of the .svg : mini table. - Hxyp (talk) 01:29, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Lower case digits

I reverted the following addition by 71.118.51.202, whose edit comment states: "Use of lower case is actually incorrect":

Use of lower case letters to represent the non-decimal digits is discouraged. Historically in the 1960's through 1980's, hexadecimal digits were universally represented by upper case letters by most recognized texts of the era. The only exception found is the first edition of "The C programming language" (the "K&R Book") which explicitly permitted either case. However, in the past two decades mainly due to programmer laziness, community standards have relaxed.

References

The referenced source is laughable, and the notion that there is anything mathematically "incorrect" about using lower-case a..f for hex digits is simply false. It simply depends on the conventions and rules of the tools one is using. Virtually all modern programming languages accept a..f, and using a feature of the language is not laziness. Many of us actually prefer the lower-case letters -- they scream less, and in monospaced representation are easier to read (for the same reason that lower-case text is easier to read than all-caps).

Now, it may be that early sources (or even some current sources) "discourage" use of the lower-case digits; that may be a point of interest that could be added to the article, but the reference above is a very weak source for that. There are many reasons for the early preference for upper-case: most early computers, for example, didn't even have lower-case letters, and texts naturally adapted to that style. But today you find lower-case hex everywhere.

-- Elphion (talk) 22:38, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. C fully embraced lowercase letters beginning in 1972. In those days it was rather challenging to find a computer terminal which understood and could generate lowercase, since they were mostly used for mainframes which were oblivious to lowercase. It wasn't until around 1977 when the widespread deployment of CRT-based VDTs fully embraced lowercase and simplified using Unix and C. 1972 to now is almost 40 years: That's a firmly established tradition—not laziness. —EncMstr (talk) 23:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Also agree. Many languages, especially assemblers, in the early days were designed when programs were typically written in all uppercase. Algol 68, however provides an even older exception than C. It allowed bit field and integral literal values in non-decimal bases with the syntax nrdddd, where n was the base (2, 4, 8, 16), followed by the letter "r", and a string of digits. The language report specifies the hex digits as *lowercase*. See 8.2 of: http://vestein.arb-phys.uni-dortmund.de/~wb/RR/rrTOC.html Rwessel (talk) 04:53, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Gosh that's a hard to read document. Section 8.2 is here. —EncMstr (talk)

AT&T hex format

I incorrectly reverted a link correction a few hours ago (put back by 12.153.112.21), as I misread the diff as actually adding AT&T to the "$" prefix section of the "Written Representation" section, rather than just fixing the link. Anyway, the problem remains: I don't believe that including AT&T in that section is correct. The conventional "AT&T" assembler syntax uses a $ as a prefix for constants, but without a further "0x", those are decimal constants. IOW, $10 is *decimal* 10, $0x10 is a hex constant (decimal 16). And there are cases of numbers which are not literals, and those are specified without the $ prefix, but again use 0x to indicate a hex number.

Other than that I'm not sure of any justification for including AT&T in the $ prefix group (I speculated that it's possible the old 3B systems might have used that convention). And as that's clearly not correct, I think that AT&T should be removed from that section, and either be given its own section or included in the *nix/"0x" section instead. Rwessel (talk) 04:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Humour

In the humour section is the sentence: "With that last H it becomes possible to write new words and sentences, such as for example 1517ADEADB17CH." As it clearly implies "bitch" i feel this is inappropriate for wikipedia. Any thoughts?

I think it is very important to let humourous details like this one stay. It is a real life example, and I've seen much worse use of nasty words without reason here, than that one. --Bufdaemon

Forget the word itself, it is a nasty, not funny, phrase that portrays male techies in a really poor light. You really don't want to perpetuate that image, do you?Trishm 09:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it a dead bitch? 128.210.12.36 (talk) 00:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the article hexspeak is a random collection of mildly amusing jokes that can be or have been made using hexadecimal notation, sourced only to primary sources, and with no single reliable secondary source to suggest that the list is complete, or representative, or significant. The section Hexadecimal#Common_patterns_and_humor, which refers to that article, mentions a few of those jokes and recounts some others, all without any sources at all. It seems completely undue. I have deleted it. Spectral sequence (talk) 18:56, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

counting

I've worked out an alternative method to counting to 16 on your fingers . Each bone for 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F and then the palm for 10.jjbernardiscool (talk) 09:46, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Computing additions in lede

In [this edit], User:Nimur added computer-programming-oriented info in the lede. As a programmer myself, I agree with what it says, but is it right to emphasize this use in the lede? Hexadecimal isn't just for computing. Also, the new lede's "0x" notation emphasis contradicts with the "Representation" section just after the lede. Unless someone objects, I'll revert this per WP:BRD (which I'm not quite doing in order -- that's just how I roll). A D Monroe III (talk) 17:31, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

No worries. I was proactively responding to a Computing reference desk discussion, in which another user was confused: Hexadecimal question, (June 17). If you can edit my changes to clarify the lede, please feel free; or if you strongly feel that the lede was more clear before my changes, please feel free to revert. Nimur (talk) 22:40, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Hm. So, if I follow this, the change was in response to the lede being incomprehensible; programming use was introduced as a way of better explaining this. I agree the original lede was not very helpful. So, I won't revert, but still don't want to rely so much on 'C' programming use right from the start. I'll have to think about this. A D Monroe III (talk) 23:10, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

But WHY?

The article does nothing to explain why the hexadecimal system was invented, or why it sees so much use in computer science. Can someone address this please? What is the point of using a base-16 system?

Computers use binary. Converting from a binary representation to hexadecimal representation is much simplier than converting from binary to decimal. This is performed rather quickly in your head by grouping 4-bit numbers in longer binary representations, and converting each 4-bit group to a hexadecimal digit. For example:

Representation	Description
0010100100010101	16-bit binary number representation
0010 | 1001 | 0001 | 0101	16-bit binary number representation grouped in 4-bit groups
2 | 9 | 1 | 5	Converting 4 bit binary groups to 1 hexadecimal "digit"
0x2915	Hex value after conversion

With time, it becomes simple to convert from a 4-bit binary representation to a 1-hexadecimal "digit" representation. 199.62.0.252

But still, why hexadecimal? Why not base 4 or base 8? If that's too "small", why not base 32? That could also be represented with 0-9 + letters.

Hexadecimal seems very random to me. It would be nice to have an explanation in the article. Lonaowna (talk) 17:39, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Excuse my quick self-reply, but when thinking in bytes, it make sense of course. To represent an entire byte in a single character, you would need base 256, which cannot be depicted with number and letters. To represent that byte in two characters, you need base 16 (16^2 = 256).

I think this should be included in the article, backed up by a proper source, of course. Lonaowna (talk) 17:53, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Octal (base 8) was/is common as well. It's mainly tradition, plus a few minor practical issues. Base-4 only halves the size of the numbers, and doing arithmetic with large bases (eg. base-32) is somewhat clumsy (for example, the multiplication table for base-32 has 1024 entries - hex is bad enough at 256!). Remember that these traditions largely predate common calculators with hex or octal support (the TI Programmer was introduced in 1978, for something like $50 - about $200 today), and many of us learned to do hex (and octal and binary) arithmetic by hand on a regular basis. Octal was commonly used on a number of machines with six bit characters (or some multiple there-of), for example many of the 12/18/36 bit machines from DEC (PDP-1/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/15, DECSystem-10/20, for example), and often carried over to the same manufacturers 8-bit line (PDP-11 and VAX, for example). Octal works well with six bit characters because you need exactly two octal digits per character. It's a bit clumsy for 8-bit characters since you need three (which didn't . Further using octal on a machine with (say) 16-bit words leads to a less clear separation of bytes. For example 0x89AB is a word of two bytes, one 0x89 and the other 0xAB. In octal, that's 0104653, and the two bytes are 0211 and 0253, which leaves the character subdivisions much less clear. Base-32 is also clumsy plus it actually helps little. You still need two base-32 digits for an eight bit byte, and four for a 16 bit bit word, which is no improvement over hex, and it's clumsier as well, having both more tedious arithmetic and a lack of even partitioning of the characters. For 32 bit words you'd actually save an entire digit (7 vs. 8 in hex), so a minor gain, while leaving all the pain. So basically it because if you start with binary, you want a power-of-two base for your shorthand notation, and 16 just happens to be the most practical size in most modern cases (and 8 was a practical size on many older machines). 32 is too big, 4 is too small, and 16 fits better than 8. Rwessel (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

That's a great explanation. Thanks! It might be useful to add something like this to the article. Lonaowna (talk) 21:55, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Single-character pence representation on ICT 3100

User:188.29.21.86 added information about the pre-decimalization storage/representation of British Sterling currency values. Several schemes for single character pence representation existed. Typically on punched cards a lone 11 and 12 punch represented the 10d and 11d. Both mappings were actually commonly used: the B.S.I mapping was 11/12-punch to 11d/10d, and the "IBM" mapping was 11/12-punch to 10d/11d (although IBM provided support for both mappings in a number of products, for example, some of their Cobol compilers). For at least EBCDIC interpretations of punched card hole patterns, these were "-" and "&" characters (and other interpretations were different). Anyway, none of that has any connection to hex, unless ICT used their chosen representation of 10d and 11d as two of the hex digits (presumably 10 and 11), but that would still leave them needing a way to represent hex digits 12-15. That seems unlikely, and so I reverted the change, but if it can be documented, we should put it back - including information about what was done with the 12-15 digits. Rwessel (talk) 14:23, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

In ICT's "sterling" number format, 10d and 11d were indeed 0x0A and 0x0B respectively; I can't remember what symbols were used for 0x0C trough to 0x0F, but they were defined, and used where hexadecimal was necessary. this is thus relevant and should be put back, if a citation can be found. — 188.31.11.217 (talk) 12:36, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I've been looking over the 1300 Series Programmers Reference Manual (and I assume we're actually talking about 1300s here, I'm not familiar with ICT's line of machines, but I can't find references to 3100s (perhaps those existed after the Fujitsu acquisition?). While this machine had memory consisting of 48 bit words, divided into 12 four-bit "digits", I can find little reference to hex as we know it. They did use digit values 10 and 11 for pence, as we've discussed.

They appear to have had line printer code points defined for 10 and 11, which resulted in a single-character width "10" or "11" (IOW, the two digits squished into a single character, sort-of like Unicode 2491-2496 "⒑-⒒-⒓-⒔-⒕-⒖" - sans the dot, of course), card reader/punch, paper tape and "interrogating typewriter" (a printing terminal, sort of a teletype). The terminal additionally appears to support similar "12"-"15" squished characters. See part 6, pages 16-26; part 3, page 26; and part 3, page 55. Note that the printer codes do *not* appear to support 12-15 characters.

A section on diagnostics (part 5, pages 15-18), documents dump and trace facilities, which would look to be an excellent place to demonstrate their preferred hex printing format, but the two examples provided appears to carefully avoid digits in the 10-15 range. Also note that addressing on this machine was decimal, so you wouldn't see hex (or digits 10-15) in addresses either.

In most cases the manual seems to use 0-15 as need to describe the value of a digit, in one case (part 2, page 71), they distinguish 15 digits from "single position" digits by printing them with an overbar.

So where does that leave us? I don't quite know. While it looks like the terminal could print 10-15 single "squished" digits, and other devices could handle 10 and 11 squished digits (but crucially not the line printer), it's still terribly unclear what they "did* use when printing single-position hex in general, and they seem to have studiously avoided the issue in the documentation (with the single exception of the 15 with the overbar), by simply describing the value of a digit as 0-15. Rwessel (talk) 14:10, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Common Lisp entry in Written representation section

user:Joswig has added additional information about Common Lisp's base handling, specifically how the default input and output bases can be altered. As it applies to this article, changing the base to 16 would allow the use of hex numbers without the normal prefix. IMO, this is not really relevant here as this just changes the default (unprefixed base), and doesn't change the fact that the prefixed form is still accepted. And by altering the base you end up just moving the prefix requirement to decimal numbers. In the context of "linear text systems, such as those used in most computer programming environments", this added description is not really adding anything. Other languages also allow changing the default base, and that's not really relevant here either (a number of x86 assemblers allow .RADIX, for example). Even if we kept this, it should probably be shortened to something like "Common Lisp allows the default base to be changed (to 16)". Rwessel (talk) 23:54, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Switching the complete IO system for code and data to a different base is not commonly found in programming languages. Popular languages like C++ or Java don't have this option. Common Lisp has this feature for example to allow to write source code in different bases (for example a precursor of Common Lisp used base 8 for integers as a default). That means that one can encounter Lisp code or data where all numbers are Hex or one could interact with a Lisp system to easily do hex arithmetic. For example I could do all kinds of hex computations interactively. So Common Lisp, as a high-level language, allows code, data and interactive use to be fully switched to Hexadecimal input and output(which is the topic of the page). The page is about Hexadecimal representation of numbers. Here Common Lisp allows the use of hexadecimal numbers directly, without prefix. Sure, then other bases need a prefix. But the topic is Hexadecimal numbers and their representation. In Common Lisp it is not necessary to tag every hex number with a prefix.

; switching the base for reading and printing
CL-USER 106 > (setf *print-base* 16 *read-base* 16)
10

; under base 16 the following is a list of numbers, not a list of symbols

CL-USER 107 > '(baaf deea c1de ffee)
(BAAF DEEA C1DE FFEE)

; one can write code, which works with hex number data
CL-USER 108 > (mapcar (lambda (n) (+ n ce3)) '(baaf deea c1de ffee))
(C792 EBCD CEC1 10CD1)

CL-USER 109 > (reduce '+ '(C792 EBCD CEC1 10CD1))
38EF1

; this also allows hex ratio numbers
CL-USER 110 > (* (/ a b) def)
8B56/B

; and hex complex numbers
CL-USER 111 > (* (complex a d) #c(f a3))
#C(-7B1 721)

There are not many programming languages who can do stuff like above: interactive computation with hex numbers which are not just integers, but also, hex ratios or hex complex numbers.

It also affects the language, since it is required that under base 16 something like abcd is a number and no longer a symbol/variable or function identifier.

Joswig (talk) 22:45, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Sexidecimal is Correct! (not Literally but Historically)

It is true that engineers at IBM first used the bastardized Latin form Sexidecimal to describe a base 16 numbering system. It is not, and should not be the primary question here whether the form is correct grammatically. Instead, what is much more important is that the term was accurate historically -- it was used at a certain place and time. Language is less concerned with Accuracy than with Consensus. As such, it is always subject to change as soon as enough people agree that it should.

Google returns 374 results on "sexidecimal". Sounds like consensus to me.

Google returns 970 results for "sexydecimal". What's your point? --Doradus (talk) 12:44, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

The comment to which you are responding is something like 9 years old. --JBL (talk) 13:29, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hidden comment in article body that should have been posted here

Regarding the following text in the article: "In typeset text, hexadecimal is often indicated by a subscripted suffix such as 5A3₁₆, 5A3_SIXTEEN" This comment was appended: "this seems hugely verbose and i can't say i've ever seen it does anyone here a source?" by: Plugwash 23:13, 10 July 2005 (UTC).

4wikin9, this is not the place to discuss your ideas on how things should be. This page is for discussing how we can improve the article using previously published sources. If you continue to add your own personal ideas I will remove them without comment. -- GB fan 23:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This is why we need 17 numerals for a self referential hex notation. The 17th numeral is the equivalent of 10 in hex (the base). In the hexary system proposed above, a hex number is thus represented as follows (without the need to resort to decimals to specify the base): 4wikin9 (talk) 12:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC) Why not let people contribute their ideas? Is this science or religion? 93.138.32.87 (talk) 11:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC) This is the place to discuss the *article* Hexadecimal, not the subject hexadecimal, stuff related to it, or anything like that, it's for discussing the *article*. This isn't the place to discuss soufflé recipes, your favorite political candidate, or the game you saw on television yesterday, *nor* is it the place to discuss some new invention. No one is wanting to prevent the contribution of new idea, just do it in a place where doing so is appropriate. WP:NOTAFORUM Rwessel (talk) 12:21, 21 January 2016 (UTC) It is a discussion of the Hexadecimal article. Mixing numerals and letters is bothersome to some of us brought up with strict scientific rigorosity. 93.138.32.87 (talk) 14:16, 21 January 2016 (UTC) No it is not a discussion of the Hexadecimal article it is a discussion of what a person proposes we convert to. Unless this has been published somewhere else in a reliable source it doesn't even belong here on the talk page. You need to find somewhere else to propose changes to the way hexadecimal is written. -- GB fan 17:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Unique names above ten

Not that it's of critical importance, but this line "most European languages lack non-decimal names for the numerals above ten" is incorrect. English has unique names to 12, after that it starts using the -teen system. Same with German and Norwegian. Spanish goes to 15 in one pattern before switching to another pattern, French goes to 16. I tried changing that line, but it was reverted, so I thought some discussion on the issue might be worthwhile. Probably the point is, no language naturally has a hexadecimal numbering system built into the language (although there is some support for base 12, or the proposed "dozenal"), so we've had to invent some adaptations for hex. Nerfer (talk) 18:22, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

My two cents: In the Indo-European languages I'm familiar with, words for "eleven" and "twelve" don't follow the regular pattern of the integers below 20, but they are still following a pattern that I would describe as "decimal": "eleven" and "twelve" echo "one" and "two", "onze" and "douze" echo "un" and "deux", etc. -- there's an unambiguous reset that happens at 10, which is then followed by another unambiguous reset to the "-teen" system. (Maybe in the case of French one should understood their number words as a hybrid of decimal and base 20.) Also Hungarian (which is not Indo-European) is very decimal. Of course the best way to settle this would be with a decent reference to something in the linguistics literature .... --JBL (talk) 19:01, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the putative "unique names" for the early teens in several IE languages (eleven, twelve; elf, zwolf; once, doce, trece, catorce; etc.) are all originally compounds involving the basic names for "one", "two", and so forth. They clearly reflect a decimal origin. -- Elphion (talk) 19:13, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Color coding of prime factors in real number table

For some reason the prime factors listed in this table have been color coded. Two has been blue, three green, and "11" (decimal on one side, hex on the other) yellow on both sides of the table (although decimal 11 and, five is blue on the left and green on the right. Others have been red. Recently the red ones were changed to black by 87.254.76.191, but that was revered by Arthur Rubin and Sapphorain. What exactly is the color coding supposed to show? Why are the factors of the base+/-1 interesting? And why are "all others" red? If they're not interesting, why is black not appropriate? Frankly I don't see what this accomplishes, and I think we should remove the color coding entirely. Rwessel (talk) 15:22, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

In any base b, fractions involving factors of (b − 1) in the denominator will have a repeating period of 1, and fractions involving factors of (b + 1) in the denominator will have a repeating period of 2. The shorter the repeating period, the better; so long repeating periods like an eleventh in hexadecimal are rather bad, hence coloured red. The red numbers have no good divisibility tests, while the green digits have easy tests thanks to being divisors, the blue digits can use the digit-sum test, and the yellow digits can use the digit-alternating-sum test. Double sharp (talk) 15:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Why is any of that relevant to an article on hex? And there's a reasonably straight-forward divisibility test for seven as well (at least in decimal), why not highlight that? Rwessel (talk) 15:40, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually, according to Divisibility rule there are *five* divisibility tests for seven - I only knew of the first... Rwessel (talk) 15:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

These are properties of hexadecimal: they are colour-coded for the base. If you want to see if a hexadecimal number is divisible by 5 (coloured blue), for example, you sum the digits. Hence, for example, hexadecimal D890_hex is divisible by 5 as D + 8 + 9 + 0 = 1E and 1 + E = F, a multiple of 5. Additionally, we have 1/3 = 0.555... and 1/5 = 0.333... in hexadecimal, and aren't the fifths #000, #333, #666, #999, #CCC, and #FFF pretty common colour choices?

The decimal divisibility test for seven is light-years away from being as straightforward as the divisor tests (for 2 and 5) or the modulo-±1 tests (for 3 and 11). The test you mention (alternating blocks of three) not only requires difficult mental addition and subtraction of three-digit numbers, but you need to remember all 142 multiples of 7 below a decimal thousand to use it. Can you recognize that 889 is a multiple of 7 at a glance? Contrast this to simply summing the digits to test for decimal 3 or 9, or hexadecimal 3, 5, and F! Additionally, 1/7 in decimal is the ugly 0.142857... with a six-place period. Double sharp (talk) 16:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm still failing to grasp why these should be highlighted by color though. If 5 is a factor there's a "5". How does making it blue help? Rwessel (talk) 03:55, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with Rwessel here. --JBL (talk) 11:46, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The colour helps make the difference between prime factors of b, (b − 1), (b + 1), and any other primes immediately noticeable, so that the list at the top doesn't have to be referred to all the time. Double sharp (talk) 12:25, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

For one particular task, possibly this color-coding might be useful. For any other task, or for someone just glancing through the article, it is redundan and distracting. Moreover the color red is not explained anywhere. I really see no justification at all for giving the most generic piece of information in the table the most visible color. Consequently, I have removed the red. I would also not object to removing the other colors, but at least I have been convinced that they might be useful to someone. --JBL (talk) 13:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Looking at it now, I think the black is too dark, and looks too similar to the green. And now we still have the problem that the colour black is not explained anywhere: it's just that it's now black instead of red. And really, is it that difficult to ignore the colours? I did not expect that to be the case. Perhaps I was wrong. Double sharp (talk) 13:58, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with the colors, but there needs to be a note explaining them. Using them in the header is not sufficient. -- Elphion (talk) 19:14, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Black is the default color for text; it does not need to be explained. I find it easy to distinguish the green from the black, but of course you could always replace green with red or something to resolve this. --JBL (talk) 01:32, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Why was my number->numeral edit reverted?

I changed some instances of "number" to "numeral" to be consistent both with Wikipedia usage in other articles and with mathematical accuracy. This edit was reverted by Elphion. Why? Briankharvey (talk) 03:50, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The edit summary by Elphion (talk · contribs) was " 'numeral' refers to a glyph, not a representation using them", which I would agree with. "2AF3" is a hexadecimal number, not a numeral, but the "2", "A", "F" and "3" are each numerals. Rwessel (talk) 05:32, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

To avoid confusion, why isn't 'digit' used for this? SP1R1TM4N (talk) 17:02, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Re "Verbal and digital representations" section

Could a caveat be added to the suggestion that "4D" could be mistaken for 'forty', pointing out that this is only true in North America? There is no confusion at all in the rest of the English-speaking world, which manages to pronounce a T as a T. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SP1R1TM4N (talk • contribs) 17:08, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

The claims in that paragraph are uncited and probably uncitable; I have trimmed them, and in particular removed the statement to which you (very reasonably) objected. --JBL (talk) 17:18, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

And they're probably incorect anyway. Spiritman is wrong about the pronunciation of medial /t/ in North America, which along with the rest of the English-speaking world uses an unaspirated voiceless consonant. In rapid speech that could be misheard as a /d/, and precisely because of that the speaker would normally use stress and tone to prevent confusion with "forty". -- Elphion (talk) 23:29, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Elphion, that is a ridiculous assertion to make. Please listen to more voices from the Anglophone world. For a start, many of us in England use a guttural stop in place of that T. And many (if not most) people in the US don't turn off voicing for the T, which makes it sound very similar to a D. SP1R1TM4N (talk) 01:03, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Which I guess means your claim that "the rest of the English-speaking world ... manages to pronounce a T as a T" is not quite true after all? But most Americans do use a voiceless stop. Phonetically it may not be quite the same stop you use, even if you use an alveolar stop. But there is enough distinction between /t/ and /d/ that the lyrics of Mairzy Doats are heard as nonsense, while their translation into actual spoken English is not. As you point out, the pronunciation of phonemes varies among dialectical populations. What I object to is your singling one population out for ridicule. -- Elphion (talk) 03:33, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

This discussion no longer appears to have anything to do with the article content. Perhaps, if you'd like to continue, you could do so somewhere else? Thanks. --JBL (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Other characters used

NEC in the NEAC 1103 computer documentation from 1958, uses the term "sexadecimal" and the sequence 0123456789DGHJKV. See the brochure at http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/NEC/NEC.1103.1958102646285.pdf. --(unsigned) 2007-07-18T04:08:21‎ 71.221.71.190

The article does not mention symbols 0, 1 and V. While 0 and 1 can be deduced, where can the V be derived from?

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Origin of hexadecimal notation using ABCDEF

The article at present does not discuss the origin of the A-F symbols (for 10-15) at all, although prior versions attributed it to IBM somewhen in the 1950s. I think this is vital info for the article, so we should research and add this, ideally by nailing it down to a specific project and time, perhaps even to the inventor.

Having had only a cursory look so far, I have seen it being mentioned in IBM documents dated 1960, and I've seen third-party documents (dated decades later) attributing it to IBM. Has someone seen it in IBM documents of the 1950s (or earlier)? --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

[I found this comment in an old thread in the talk page archive:]

IBM certainly was not the first to use A-F. Such was in use from the late 1940's through the late 1950's at MIT's Wirlwind Project - a 16 bit binary computer - I joined the project in 1952.

[...]

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kp2a (talk • contribs) 16:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

However, I've gone through a few Whirlwind I documents at Bitsavers and could not find this notation being mentioned there so far. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

National Bureau of Standards report 1984, titled “Programming and coding handbook for SEAC”, by Joseph H. Levin, dated September 30, 1952 shows they used hexadecimal characters 0-9A-F already by that time. NBS Report 1036 contains a paper titled “Preliminary Notes on the System Design of the STATAC-SCOOP Computer” by Alan L. Leiner, dated June 25, 1951 and described as a talk given at the Electronic Computers Laboratory Seminar on May 10, 1951 uses the term "hexadecimal" two years before the Webster attested date of 1953. -- Andrew Dalke

Proposed numerical symbols.

I have removed the addition (twice) because:

1. There is no hint of any evidence that this proposal was widely accepted (to date) (WP:UNDUE).
2. It refers to the original research of the author in question.
3. It is a very recent proposal by the author which to date does not seem to have attracted any outside attention (WP:MADEUP).

Kleuske (talk) 11:00, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm just curios about actual rules of regular editors. When I tried to describe proposal few years ago, it was rejected on "23:34, 3 May 2015‎" with comment "..Reverted good faith edits by Valdisvi: Someone's personal blog is not a reliable source. While this might, in the future, be of historical interest, at least Martin has a ref.."

When we get it publicised in peer reviewed journal it is still not enough, even though I don't see big difference from proposal of Bruce Alan Martin (except it was long time ago and that our proposal is much more practical). Is wikipedia source of all knowledge, or just source of history and old ideas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valdis.vitolins (talk • contribs) 15:02, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it does seem (to me) on a par with the proposal of Bruce Alan Martin. I think we should list both or neither. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:13, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Without any sourced notable use of Martin's proposal, it should go. Same applies to the Valdis' proposal. --A D Monroe III (talk) 16:52, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

The Martin proposal is from 1968 and is very reasonable in the history section as it is likely that using A–F was considered ridiculous by others at the time. There only needs to be one example of a proposal, namely the 1968 effort—it shows the general idea of using new symbols. A new proposal should not be added unless secondary reliable sources (independent of the authors) publish opinions on the proposal. Mentioning a new proposal that may be useful or which may never generate interest is not the purpose of an encyclopedic article. Johnuniq (talk) 05:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

This journal (IJCSET) is not reviewed, and not even indexed, by MathSciNet. This is a strong indication that it is not a reliable publication. Moreover, both authors of the article proposed (Cumings and Vitolins) are credited with zero publication by MathSciNet. It is not the role of wikipedia to offer notoriety to mathematicians and their ideas before they are recognized by the mathematical community. But I also agree with Arthur Rubin: The Martin proposal is not much better from this standpoint, as Comm. ACM (in which his proposal was published in 1968 in a letter to the Editor) is no longer indexed by MathSciNet since 1992, and as Bruce Martin is also credited with zero publication by MathSciNet. I thus think the mention of his proposal should also be suppressed. The argument proposed for keeping it, « it is likely that using A-F was considered ridiculous by others at the time » is pure speculation and supported by no source. Sapphorain (talk) 19:06, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I'm speculating—but I'm only speculating about whether the mention is WP:DUE, and due boils down to a matter of opinion. There is no speculation that there was at least a minor objection raised against ABCDEF in the early days. Johnuniq (talk) 22:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Martin's intervention would definitely need a secondary source mentioning it in order to be kept; I suppressed the reference to Vitolins's blog, which is not an appropriate reference. Sapphorain (talk) 10:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

If we can't find sources for a competing proposals being actually used (or at least more widely debated), I'd be good with leaving a general statement along the lines of "other proposals were made, but didn't catch on", and even giving Martin's proposal as a source for this without including it in the main text. But if we instead just take out the whole thing, I wouldn't complain. --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose to merge Tonal system into Hexadecimal. The Tonal system is not so notable, and the Hexadecimal article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Tonal system will not cause any problems as far as article size is concerned. Pinging @Double sharp, Balon Greyjoy, and Djkauffman: for assistance. —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 08:49, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

• Against. I think Tonal System is notable. It's a base 16 system, but it's not a logical sub-subject to Hexadecimal. There's definitely enough substance in Tonal System article to justify a separate article. 141.226.10.220 (talk) 14:40, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per the IP above. Let's keep logically different topics separate. It makes linking and categorization much easier, and will also allow to include information relevant to one topic, but not to the other. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:26, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

removal / replacing Numeral systems

Although the section on Numeral systems has been part of the subject since Radix~enwiki added it on 11:46, 12 September 2005 it seems to dominate the page inappropriately. This is especially true since wikipedia recently(?) pops up a page preview which in this case does not even show the values greater than 9 !

I would like to propose removing that section entirely.

If there's feel strongly that it is important content then at least moving is elsewhere on the page so that the page preview is more meaningful. DGerman (talk) 20:22, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Excessive ancillary information

It seems, to me, that this article contains too much additional slightly related information which is better left to other articles. For example real numbers and transfer encoding. I will wait a while and unless there are objections remove some of the content. DGerman (talk) 23:12, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Cultural section

By stumbling on some dated french translation found by someone in some related discussion[apt://telegram-desktop][tg://join?invite=AZriqT8UBirHcotBOuYSfg] (if broken link: [16] (contains proprietary javascript, author told me he doesn’t care about copyright/law hence dare to add a proper license)) [tg://privatepost?channel=1058276906&post=40951] (private group only for antispam reasons …wait why wikipedia doesn’t accept non-web links? this (although simpler and more common) alternative: https://t.me/c/1058276906/40951 requires proprietary javascript and encourages the installation on imho non-trustable and possibly non totally free software), from yet-another-wikipedia-copypastegatherer (but with more trackers), I guessed the mistranslation of the word »hacker«, and that User:Dbachmann —who contributed regularely to that article in the past— removed it, not only to more imprecision, but actually in the process of chronologizing, removing sectioning (which decreases referenceability (as each subsection has its own HTML anchor)),: what is the tradition on wikipedia on this respect? is chronological order anyhow traditionally preferred here?

Apparently User:Adhemar introduced the quotation in May 2006, and added reference next July, and it indeed mentions hackers specifically.

Btw what’s the most appropriate way to quote revisions as internal links (I did as external ones there)?

found — Galex-713 (talk) 02:13, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I’d like to revert but I’m not sure of myself, this is clearly not vandalism, and I’d like to have the opinions of the involved people first (idk if merely mentioning their page is enough to highlight them, or if it’s necessary to write on their user pages: i’m trying both User_talk:Adhemar User_talk:Dbachmann, i’m not very experienced about wikipedia socialization yet).

Galex-713 (talk) 17:41, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Schwartzman demand

Btw, could someone find me a copy of »The Words of Mathematics: an etymological dictionary of mathematical terms used in English« (Sci-Hub (wtf why tf does wikipedia censors its links??) doesn’t have https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.4169/j.ctt13x0mzr yet apparently…] and my colleges are apparently either providing jstor its logins (university of western brittany), either have its CAS redirection broken (university of paris)…)? I’d like to check myself the original quotation, as well as look to context as for relationship of Schwartzman to hacker culture, his acamedia, etc. (they doesn’t have their wikipedia page)… Galex-713 (talk) 17:41, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I’ve tried to ask original contributor tho Galex-713 (talk) 18:02, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Here’s the page 105 where the quote can be found which should be visible if you haven’t read too many other pages of that particular book on Google books.

Also, it seems to me that Schwartzman is using “(computer) hackers” here in the sense that GNU endorses: people who enjoy playful cleverness.

This edit by Dbachmann is the one where “computer hackers would be tempted to shorten” is replaced by “may have been avoided because of its suggestive abbreviation”. I don’t have strong feelings either way about the inclusion or not of the “computer hackers” who are ones suggesting the abbreviation to sex, according to Steven Schwartzman. — Adhemar (talk) 21:55, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Well if you confirm i believe you, however although I don’t remember of having ever read a page of that book, google blocks me for it…

But anyway yeah I imagined it was in that sense, and since it is more specific and precise I thought it would be better for it to stay, waiting for some time for reaction from User:Dbachmann before reverting… btw, since you mentioned him again, you searched the specific change yourself too? by dichotomy too? (i’m not a big contributor)— Galex-713 (talk) 00:27, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Here’s a screenshot of the entry — Adhemar (talk) 08:04, 5 April 2022 (UTC)