>> 3 is closer to the universal optimum 2.71 than is 2. That is the absolute most simple elevator pitch for ternary.
>- iota co-founder
lol they seriously say that? For those who aren't aware...
You get e (2.71828...) as the optimal base when you're trying to minimize the product of a) the number of symbols you're using and b) the number of symbols needed to represent a number.
Once there are other factors that are significant, it's no longer the optimum. And indeed, in the real world, you care about the difficulty of implementing base-x vs base-y logic in hardware, the installed ecosystem for computing in that base, etc, which (to put it mildly) heavily favors base-2, even for domains where one subproblem is more naturally expressed in trinary.
>- iota co-founder
lol they seriously say that? For those who aren't aware...
You get e (2.71828...) as the optimal base when you're trying to minimize the product of a) the number of symbols you're using and b) the number of symbols needed to represent a number.
Once there are other factors that are significant, it's no longer the optimum. And indeed, in the real world, you care about the difficulty of implementing base-x vs base-y logic in hardware, the installed ecosystem for computing in that base, etc, which (to put it mildly) heavily favors base-2, even for domains where one subproblem is more naturally expressed in trinary.