Talk:Unary numeral system

message: The article asserts that "Multiplication and division are more cumbersome"
:Addition and subtraction are particularly simple in the unary system, as they involve little more than string concatenation. Multiplication and division are more cumbersome, however.
They seem pretty trivial to me.  There is no citation for this assertion.  If Addition is "little more than string concatenation", then surely multiplication is simply "repeated concatenation".  Division is a little odd, but I would not call it cumbersome.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwerle (talk • contribs) 17:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiplication and Division 

message: The article makes out the use of unary in theoretical computer science to be sneaky.  I'm sure the reasons unary is used is nothing of the sort.  It is used to make formal models of computation manageable.  Try writing a Turing machine that multiplies together two numbers given in binary.  It is not easy.
Incidentally, in the theory of computation, a modified unary system is often used.  In this modified system, "1" means 0, "11" means 1, and so on, so that 0 is representable.  CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 14:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Unary in theoretical computer science

message: Someone added merge tags to Unary numeral system and Tally mark, but failed (I think) to provide arguments or start a discussion, which I hereby do:
*Oppose: While the things are closely related, I think it's reasonable to have separate articles. Tally marks are unary numeral systems all right, but they are more than that. They have a cultural history, and take different forms in different cultures.--Niels Ø (noe) (talk) 13:34, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge of [[Tally mark]] into this article 

message: I'm not sure if it is possible to have a unary system, for when you try the unary system it always relies on a nothing to differentiate it between the something hence using 2 numerals. Does that make sense? It does to me anyway.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.30.72.135 (talk) 07:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Unary is not a positional notation but a bijective notation.  The base-1 positional notation doesn't exist.  The base-10 bijective goes like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, 11, 12, ..., 19, 1A, 21, ..., 99, 9A, A1, ... - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 08:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See Non-standard positional numeral systems.--Noe (talk) 16:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I also agree on the fact that Base 1 is not even possible.  Since Base 1 does not have a character "0", any number in Base 1 would equal to infinity because the number would continue on both the left and right sides of the number.  For example, the number 410 is equal to the number 00000000000000004.0000000000010 because the zeros go on infinitely on both the left and right sides of the number however, the extra zeros are cut off because they are irrelevant.  However, in Base 1, there is only one kind of number so therefore the number 111111111 in Base 1 is equal to 111111111111111111 and is also equivalent to 1 and is also equal to 1.11111111111(etc.).  If all numbers are equal to infinity then you cannot do math using Base 1.  If you cannot do math or represent numbers in a finite way than you really do not have a base at all.  Also, another way to think about Base 1 is to think of a blackboard.  A blank blackboard, in reality, is Base 1.  There is only one kind of color and therefore there is nothing you can do with a blank blackboard.  However, once you start to use chalk then you have two colors, black and white.(aka binary)--JavaBinaryUser (talk) 04:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Does the Unary System even exist?

message: Really? From the number of confused asking questions here, it seems that many people find the system they learned in (usually denary) to be the simplest. I suggest removal of this term. Objections?Cliff (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course it's the simplest; it is one-to-one: Three cows, three cats, three dollars, three points, three whatever, is represented by three (often indentical) glyphs. People may misunderstand or have questions about the explanations and other things in the article; they are not misunderstanding unary numbers. Does the simplicity have to be mentioned in the first sentence of the article? Perhaps not, but it certainly makes sense to me.--Nø (talk) 22:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simplest? 

message: I feel Unary system is different from base 1 in many ways, for example not being base 1, therefore the redirect from Base 1 should be removed and an article created describing a numeral system in which only 0 may exist because the maximimum is 1. Does anyone object? Does anyone agree?--Sonez1113 (talk) 18:43, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That does not sound like a notable system. The whole point of having number systems in the first place is to represent all numbers, why would you have one that represented only one number? Although this is not a positional number system, it is a base 1 bijective number system and AFAIK the only system commonly called base 1. Cheers, — sligocki (talk) 01:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Having a redirect from Base 1 does not mean it is equivalent to 'base 1': it simply means that this is the article that best covers that term. Any mention of 'base 1', even one explaining that it is not proper for indicating 'unary' makes it a good candidate for the redirect.  I don't think any better target exists, nor that one is needed. Bcharles (talk) 22:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Base 1 Redirect

message: Bijective-unary is not "base 1". This business about "bijectivity" screws up the meaning of the word "radix / base". Bijectivity seems to remove "the symbol for zero" from the set of symbols, yet the definition of "radix / base" is itself based on including the symbol for zero. It's gotta be one way or the other; without rewriting all the definitions, you are going to have a problem if you "change the rules for base 1" and try to pretend it's consistent. Bijective-unary is not "base 1". 108.14.125.186 (talk) 19:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  trying to be too clever, you've introduced an inconsistency into these wiki pages 

message: Hey, i'm new to WP here. Is it proper to have an empty references section? Should it be removed or kept? Perhaps does the page deserve a missing refs templates? Scimonster (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The article has references now so no need to remove the References section. Blackbombchu (talk) 03:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Empty References section 

message: By regualar numeral system, I meant Positional numeral system where you have a digit for all numbers from 0 to 1 less than the base as opposed to Bijective numeral where you have a digit for all numbers from 1 to the base. Maybe the sentence you removed should get added back in except for the phrase "regular numeral system" getting replaced by "positional numeral system". Blackbombchu (talk) 03:46, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so. It seems a confusing and longwinded way of saying "this is not a positional number system". Since it isn't a positional number system, what do we care about how a nonexistent positional number system would behave? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Positional unary numeral system 

message: "However, multiplication is more cumbersome", can somebody please add a numeral example? --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:50, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps "cumbersome" is the wrong word. The procedure itself is very straightforward: for example, to multiply ||||| by |||||||, you take each | of ||||||| and replace it by ||||| (5 × 7 = 35). However, trying to apply this to numbers of any significant size should explain pretty well without words the disadvantages of the unary system. Double sharp (talk) 05:01, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  example of multiplication 

message: The section "Comparison with tally mark systems" states that (real-life) tally marks are a mix of unary and quinary because they group tallies in segments of five. I believe quinary is a positional system, and while the bijective positional system base 1 is identical to unary, there is nothing positional about the way the grouping in fives work. Therefore, I'm inclined to say it is not quinary at all. Perhaps, rather than removing the statement completely, we can find a way to state it in a more correct way ("a grouping in fives, but without the positionality of the quinary system", or sth like that).--Nø (talk) 10:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: While it is tempting to compare tally marks and quinary because they both group in 5’s, that’s where the similarities end. The argument falls apart after counting to 2510 (1005) where we don’t see a third “digit” added to the number. I think that tally mark groupings are for ease of reading, as we have in thousands separators. I’m reverting the edit that added this section; it was original research (admittedly so in the edit notes). —Bando26 (talk) 15:35, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quinary?