(2)The layman’s aversion to “complicated” fractions is at the basis of many counting systems other than the decimal (which is just an accident tied to the number of human fingers). Base-12 for instance, which is still so persistent both in measuring units (hours in a day, inches in a foot) and in common language (“a dozen”) originates from the simple fact that 12 happens to be divisible by 2, 3 and 4, which are the most common number of parts an item is usually split into. Other bases, such as base-60 and base-360, have emerged from a similar abundance of simple factors.