the best way to count, trailer

jan Misali says that the best base for positional notation is base six... but is that really true?

join us on an hour-long journey through a deep thicket of math to answer just that.

[HBMmaster]

the trailer starts on a black screen, with some nice-sounding guitar arpeggios in the background. this pleasant audio is immediately interrupted by the low-quality voice of a teenage jan Misali, taken directly from their 2018 video "a better way to count". text in white Noto Serif (the same style of text used in Misali's videos) then explains that the video this is a trailer for will be an hour-long response to that very video. the guitar music is joined by a synth playing the melody from "seximal fractions", the theme from "a better way to count", which we're told is part of the upcoming video's "original soundtrack". a TTS voice quotes "yeah but I'm a cute fraud though right?", and we're given some vague and somewhat contradictory information about when exactly in December the video will be released, and the URL for the channel that uploaded the video you are currently watching.

between these text slides, a lot of things are shown very quickly. in order, we see:
* four videos about dozenal that predate Misali's seximal video, likely the very ones that jM was attempting to satirize in their controversial "let's do an intentionally bad job arguing in favor of dozenal for the first few minutes of this video" segment.
* a series of charts that, if I had to guess (and I do) I'd reckon are showing the ratio between the size of an integer and the length of its representation in various bases.
* the digits of one eleventh represented in base six, synchronized to the melody in the background.
* some uh. dots with line segments radiating from them. this is definitely visualizing something that will be explained in the full video, but I have no clue what it is.
* some rectangles of various widths. a similar visual appears later in the trailer, and I believe this is an abstract representation of the lengths of the expansions of rational numbers in different bases.
* a distinctly Misali-style chart showing divisibility tests that exist for various prime numbers in decimal, dozenal, and seximal.
* the rectangles again, but there's more of them and some of them are red. I believe the column on the left represents seximal rational expansions, with the red rectangles corresponding to worst-case representations, the three red bars shown representing elevenths, thirteenths, and seventeenths (three of seximal's weaknesses). if I'm right, then the column on the right is probably binary; the red bars correspond to reciprocals of integers with any prime factor that isn't two or one less than a power of two.
* very briefly, we're shown a Wikipedia chart showing the "long-scale" version of the Chinese numeral system. Chinese numerals are a very popular and elegant alternative to positional notation for numbers, and this seems to suggest that the base of the numbering system won't be the only topic the upcoming video will take into account when determining "the best way to count".
* the seximal digits of one eleventh again, with the background melody transposed into a minor key.
* a bee-themed emblem with Comic Sans text declaring "SEXIMAL. / 012345 MAL BEST MAL".

many exciting questions remain unanswered. most importantly, what numbering system is the title "the best way to count" referring to? will this video agree with Misali's conclusion that seximal is the best numbering system, or will a different base be suggested instead? or perhaps the video will take no hard stance at all, and merely present the many advantages and disadvantages that come with various systems. in any case, I think I can safely say that I'm a bit excited.

[jargontrueseer]

I made a longer better comment on the actual video, but I just wanted to say thank you for discussing in detail a system that is not only widely overlooked, nor simply better in many ways than other counting systems, but is also actually possible to switch to instead of simply a hypothetical.

[suomeaboo]

The video is now one of my favorite YouTube math videos. I never thought I could be swayed from the seemingly rock-solid seximal camp.

[notdistracted]

the LENGTHS nerds on the internet will go to in order prove a point, jesus christ

[nate_storm]

i mean i get it’s a response to jan Misali, but you’re straight up copying their visual style. You couldn’t have made your own version??? Change up the colors, fonts a little?