Remember the six fingered man from The Princess Bride played by Christopher Guest? He would have been an ideal candidate for counting in base 12. Humans probably developed the base 10 system we currently use by looking at our ten fingers. Had we all been born like the six fingered man, we might have counted in base 12.
I stumbled across the idea of base 12 when reading a book by Alex Bellos. Why is a base 12 system superior to a base 10 system? At a very basic level, consider the amount of numbers that can be divided evenly into each. With 10 you are only able to divide evenly by 2 and 5. If you wanted 1/3 of 10 it would be 3.33333 out to infinity. If you divide 10 into four parts you get 2.5. 12 on the other hand (think six fingered man), is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6. If we divide 12 by 4 we get 3. If we divide 12 by 3 we get four.
There are actually many advocacy groups for base 12 systems. If you want to know more here is a link to the Dozenal Society of America. There are of course many other base number systems out there. Take for instance another character played by Christopher Guest - Nigel from "This Is Spinal Tap." He used a baffling base 11 system to rock out even louder. "These go to eleven!" But it would seem that 12 is the most logical base if we were to start our numbering system from scratch. Of course, this would be a major headache, switching everyone who has base 10 hard-wired into their brains. Check the internet for base 12 converters. They're fun to play around with.
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