> Probably not. This explanation of duodecimal is really farfetched and I’m pretty sure it arose from someone staring at their hands desperately trying to come up with a way to count 12 on their fingers to explain this.

You are mistaken. Finger counting by using your thumb against one of the 12 segments of your fingers is common in many asian cultures. It's utterly simple and immensely practical as it allows you to count up to 144 with both hands.

That is an interesting fact I wasn't aware of. I have doubts about the actual relevance of this, though. e.g. Chinese seems (so far as I can tell) to have always used decimal numbering systems, making this essentially a clever counting trick.

"I had no idea this thing even existed but let me continue to tell you why it's inferior"

I didn’t say it’s “inferior”. I said it’s not the foundation of their numbering system because their numbering system is not duodecimal.

I might not be remembering my History of Math correctly, but my recollection is that the Babylonians used Base 60, and 12 is an even subdivision of that. I also recall other Asian number systems having base 12 in some capacity, so there may be something to the counting methodology he outlined if it showed up in a few separate parts of the world.

Counting that way on one hand and then using the other hand to tally the groups would give you 5 sets of 12 or 60.

Wiki[1] seems to support your last sentence's description of how base 60 appeared.

Now, that approach would guarantee that your base is a product of two numbers (# fingers * # bones on non-thumb fingers). And, if your non-thumb fingers are roughly equivalent to each other, then that would guarantee it's a product of three numbers (# fingers * # non-thumb fingers * # bones per non-thumb finger). So I would say "it's a product of lots of numbers" does have a lot to do with the origins of base 60. Base 10, of course, is (# hands * # fingers per hand). Base 12 being more factorable than base 10 is just the luck of getting 3 * 4 vs 2 * 5.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal

Wait, doesn’t that just give you 25?

No, counting to 12 using the sections between your knuckles of your 4 fingers using your thumb on same hand will give you 3x4 and then 5 of those is 60. If you were doing fingers as a single digit, you'd get 25, though.

> 12ths are handy enough that we have a special word for “12 of something” (dozen) even though our numbering system is decimal.

My understanding is that the etymology of dozen is originally traced back to duodecim (Latin for twelve) via French dozeine. Which is interesting, but doesn't really explain why it's special beyond your observation that it's a highly composite, but comfortably small, number.

> dozeine.

French nitpicker here. We now write it "douzaine" but spellings have changed through the ages.

Yep. Most of the "French" words in English (beef, butcher, danger, very, act...) actually come from dialects brought over by the Normans when they conquered England in 1066. That's closer on the timeline to Latin than modern French.

It's special because we don't have a word for, e.g., "13 of something", say, "trezen".

Modern French allows the "aine" suffix to be applied to many numbers, meaning "a group of X." I've mostly heard it used with 10 ("dixaine") or 12 ("douzaine"), though if you asked for a "treizaine" (13) of something, you would be understood.

It is interesting that "dozen" made it into everyday English but other group sizes did not.

> It's special because we don't have a word for, e.g., "13 of something", say, "trezen".

Hmm, how about 14 of something?

You have a fortnight to respond. Though if you take about a sennight longer to think about it, you'll still get a good score.

"baker's dozen"

That's two words.

Yes! 12-column UI layout templates caught on in the early days of RWD for good reason.