[tlhIngan Hol] Anyone wan to help design a Klingon ruler?

[De'vID]

On 2 November 2016 at 20:47, Benjamin Atkinson
<benjamin.atkinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> We understand the Klingon number system was originally ternary, but was
> decimalized to facilitate communication with other civilizations. Might we
> report units of 'uj' as 0.1 uj, 0.2 uj, etc?

Note that while the original Klingon counting system is ternary, it's
*not* a base-3 positional system (which you seem to have assumed) but
a 3-adic one.

To quote The Klingon Dictionary, "Counting proceeded as follows: 1, 2,
3; 3+1, 3+2, 3+3; 2×3+1, 2×3+2, 2×3+3; 3×3+1, 3×3+2, 3×3+3". Note that
6 (decimal) is *not* "20" (i.e., 2×3, which is what it would be under
a base-3 positional notation), but rather "13" (i.e., 1×3+3, which is
what it would be in 3-adic notation). Similarly, 9 (decimal) is not
"100" (1×3×3), but "23" (2×3+3).

Under such a system, the fractional units would *not* be written as
0.1, 0.2, etc. I believe they would be 2'3.1, 2'3.2 in the quote
notation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_notation), though you
should check my math.

-- 
De'vID