Crowing over omitting Arabic numerals in the name of avoiding any kind of cultural influence or bias seems silly when everything is still going to be expressed in decimal.
The author wanted it to retain some practical value, hence the discussion of the four “layers” of time—departing from the 12-hour system completely, even if there is a better way to represent time outside of it, would make the clock difficult to use.
Very interesting. Only thing that I see is that it's difficult to tell a difference between an 8 and a 9. Like I could see how it was different on the physical clock as it changes, but if I were to just look at it on its own, it would be hard to tell without literally trying to count the sides. I'd probably just make up some symbol for those. but otherwise very cool!
Humans are really bad at counting groups larger than five (might be related to the amount of things you can point on at once). So the choice of using ten polygons seems suboptimal to me, especially given the 12 hour system used. I think using only six shapes might work better for an actual clock.
I was about to say that if it's still using a 12-hour system, it should use duodecimal numeric system instead of decimal. But then the polygons became much harder to differentiate the larger the number is so I'm not sure. Perhaps make the polygons spiky?
Cool idea nevertheless.
But that’s how Arabic numerals are made, it’s the count of the angles in each one.
Still, I like the concept of this watch.
http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2015/07/21/arabic-numerals-have...