Undecimal
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The undecimal (base-11) positional notation system is based on the number eleven, rather than ten as in decimal or eight in octal and so on. It is not a commonly used system. Undecimal requires eleven symbols representing the decimal numbers 0 through 10. For example, if the symbol for 10 were 'A', the decimal numbers 0 to 24 in undecimal would be: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 1A, 20, 21, 22. The undecimal number 1A3 would be 234 in decimal.
You can count in base-eleven on your fingers by letting two fists (no fingers or thumbs extended) represent 0 and then one finger for 1, two for 2, and so on up to ten fingers for 10, raising a mildly interesting question about why humanity didn't gravitate towards undecimal over decimal counting. One simple answer to this question lies in the fact that the concept of zero was not known to many civilizations until long after systems were developed for counting.
Base 11 in Fiction
Base 11 systems appear in several science fiction stories: Carl Sagan's novel Contact references a message "hidden" inside pi that is most striking in base 11. Also the fictional Psychlos ( in L. Ron Hubbard's book Battlefield Earth) have a base-11 counting system.In the show Babylon 5, the Minbari use Base-11 math, according to the show's creator.
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