Mixed radix numeral systems are non-standard positional numeral systems in which the numerical base varies from position to position. Such numerical representation applies when a quantity is expressed using a sequence of units that are each a multiple of the next smaller one, but not by the same factor. Such units are common for instance in measuring time; a time of 32 weeks, 5 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, 15 seconds, and 500 milliseconds might be expressed as a number of minutes in mixed-radix notation as:
... 32, 5, 7, 45; 15, 500 ... ∞, 7, 24, 60; 60, 1000or as
- 32∞577244560.15605001000
In the tabular format, the digits are written above their base, and a semicolon is used to indicate the radix point. In numeral format, each digit has its associated base attached as a subscript, and the position of the radix point is indicated by a full stop. The base for each digit is the number of corresponding units that make up the next larger unit. As a consequence there is no base (written as ∞) for the first (most significant) digit, since here the "next larger unit" does not exist (and note that one could not add a larger unit of "month" or "year" to the sequence of units, as they are not integer multiples of "week").
Read more about Mixed Radix: Examples, Manipulation, Factorial Number System, Primorial Number System
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“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (b. 1908)