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Dozenal Society of America

Promoting base twelve and alternative base mathematics

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The Dozenal Society of America

The DSA is a voluntary, nonprofit education corporation, organized for the conduct of research and education of the public in the use of dozenal (also called duodecimal or base-twelve) in calculations, mathematics, weights and measures, and other branches of pure and applied science.

Dozenal Jottings

The new official e-mail newsletter of the Dozenal Society of America. Free to all members. Featuring news items of dozenal interest, DSA business, and correspondence from our membership.

Last Issue to First | First Issue to Last

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Title: Dozenal Jottings, Issue One

Date: February 10_z, 120A_z (February 12_z, 2026_d)

Editor: John Volan

Contents:

Announcement: New Newsletter
- Why “Jottings”?
- A Request to Our Members
Board Meeting: Website Project
- Website Changes
  - Everything Has Moved
  - No Broken Links
  - Notational Changes
  - New Expanded Footer
  - Fleshed-Out Issue Pages
  - Bulletin “Chronology”
  - Navigational Improvements
  - Board Reactions
- Other Business
  - Dozenal Clock for iPhone
  - Goodman Content
  - Recalling Past Giants
  - Beard Award Plans
- Conclusion
New Members
Ad: Precision Dozenal Tools

This site and the documents on it are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This site expresses numbers in alternative bases, particularly dozenal (also called duodecimal, or base twelve).
The DSA does not endorse any particular notation or pronunciation scheme for alternative bases.
However this site defaults to the following to ensure online readability across all platforms:
“Computerese” uppercase letters represent transdecimal digits: A = ten, B = eleven, C = twelve, etc.
Single-character subscripts annotate bases: d = decimal, z = dozenal, x = hexadecimal, etc., e.g., 2014_d = 11BA_z = 7DE_x.

(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 ...)_d
(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2A 2B 30 ...)_z
(0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 20 21 22 23 24 ...)_x

PDF documents on this site reflect changing practices among dozenalists over the years:
Various symbols have been used to represent digits ten and eleven:
Dwiggins 𝒳 and Ɛ (often rendered X and E); Bell Telephone * and #; Pitman turned 2 and 3 (↊ and ↋); etc.
Italics were once used to distinguish dozenal numbers from decimal: e.g. 0.5 = 0.6.
Later, semicolon became a separate‑identity “dozenal point”, versus period as “decimal point”: e.g., 0.5 = 0;6.
However, subscript base annotations provide a more versatile solution that is least‑change: e.g., 0.5_d = 0.6_z = 0.8_x

Dozenal offers superior divisibility over decimal, which can make everyday arithmetic easier to learn:
⅙ = 0.2_z | ¼ = 0.3_z | ⅓ = 0.4_z | ½ = 0.6_z | ⅔ = 0.8_z | ¾ = 0.9_z | ⅚ = 0.A_z
⅙ = 0.1666…_d | ¼ = 0.25_d | ⅓ = 0.333…_d | ½ = 0.5_d | ⅔ = 0.666…_d | ¾ = 0.75_d | ⅚ = 0.8333…_d

EACH ONE, TEACH ONE.