History Memes

Which number base is more convenient depends on how you do arithmetic. In ancient times people thought mostly in integers and rational fractions, and highly composite numbers with lots of factors were convenient, as you could divide a number like, say, 60 a number of ways, getting integer results or simple fractions. Later, decimal approximations came into fashion, and factors of 10 as in the metric system became more fashionable. In the days when computers were small and slow and code needed to be hand-optimised, base-2-based representations were used (for example, graphics systems that represent angles with a full circle having 256 degrees rather than 360), though now everybody just uses double-precision floats and hopes that the accumulated error never gets big enough to affect results.