The reason we moved toward Base 10 is . Base 1 is incredibly "wide." To represent the population of the world (roughly 8 billion) in Base 1, you would need a string of 8 billion marks. In Base 10, you only need 10 digits. As numbers get larger, Base 1 becomes physically impossible to manage for standard arithmetic. Summary Table: Comparison of Systems Base 1 (Unary) Base 2 (Binary) Base 10 (Decimal) Symbols Used 1 (e.g., " Number 5 Complexity Very High (Long) Low (Short) Primary Use Counting/Tallies Daily Life Conclusion
Base 1 has no symbol for zero. Zero is the empty string. This works mathematically but is cumbersome in practice—how do you write an empty string in a fixed-width medium? base 1
Under this definition, a number $N$ is represented by the concatenation of $N$ instances of the digit $|$. For example: The reason we moved toward Base 10 is
By definition, in Base 1: