I think, all in all, this should not be a big deal. For the gifted kid, they'll find a way to adapt and become the next Einstein. As for the ungifted, it might give them a better leg up and allow them to perform better than they would have, so it's probably a plus anyways.
I think this is exactly what I find distasteful in the original comment: Culture is ignored in favor of what is practical for someone other than a subject of the article.
I myself have taken over two dozen university level math courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. I don’t need to have number bases explained to me, but I have raised three kids and recognize the challenge of helping them attain proficiency in basic grade school fundamentals. This is what motivated me to make the comment.
Ironically, perhaps, is the fact that my own ancestry includes an indigenous people living at the arctic circle who faced and continue to face racial discrimination, loss of native lands, and forced changes to their way of life, the Sámi. [1]
[1] https://unric.org/en/sami-we-are-the-natives-of-this-country...
> Finger binary is a system for counting and displaying binary numbers on the fingers of either or both hands. Each finger represents one binary digit or bit. This allows counting from zero to 31 using the fingers of one hand, or 1023 using both: that is, up to 2**5−1 or 2**10−1 respectively.
- "How to count to 1000 on two hands" by 3blue1brown https://youtu.be/1SMmc9gQmHQ
- "Polynesian People Used Binary Numbers 600 Years Ago - Scientific American" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people...
What is the comparative value of radixes like Binary, Octal, andHexadecimal compared to Decimal (radix 10)?
Perhaps a radix like eπI would be more useful; though some amost-mystic physicists do tend to radix 9: "nonary" (which is actually ~ also radix-3).
List of numeral systems > By culture / time period, By type of notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems :
> Numeral systems are classified here as to whether they use positional notation (also known as place-value notation), and further categorized by radix or base.
I… didn’t think that’s what I was implying. I didn’t think I was implying anything at all, I was pretty direct about my meaning.