How high can you count on your fingers and toes?

1,048,575

(if you can speak binary)

If you could hold your fingers in 1 of 3 positions then the number would be - 3,486,784,400 (but people will stare at you)

Good question :). Darn good question!

Quickly the answer is and it all depends on the numerical system:

base 10 max=110

base 5 max=780 Please see details below.

It all depends if you are using them as counting device or as a counter (like in a place holder). as a counter you are limited to 20.

or you can count by assigning to your toes values of 10 and fingers value of one, then you can count up to 110 (in decimal system)

in general

max=sum(base^bands-n) where n is always number of bands -1.

In decimal system we have 2 bands where hands form one band and the feet the other and n=2-1=1. max=10^2 + 10=110

If you want to use base 5 then each hand or foot will represent a band and n =3

max=5^4+5^3+5^2+5^1=

=625+125+25+5=

=780

The base of 2 or binary will give you a much bigger number.

like in max=2^20+2^19+...+2=

=1,048,576+524,288+...+2= ...got the idea?

also

You can use your fingers and toes as if you would use abacus beads.

And what about chisenbop?

Check the sites below. The first one, on chisenbop, I believe fits well with your question. The second site provides an excellent tutorial.

Have fun

[edit]

1295 (base 10)

using each appendage as a digit in a base 6 number system, you can count to 5555, which equals 1295 (base 10). It's 1295 because the next number would be 10000 (base 5), which is 6^4 or 1296 (base 10). So you can count from 0 to 6^4-1.

I originally used base 5, but you can use base 6 as well. The reason you can do base 6, is because you really have the digits 0-5 available on each appendage.

I would say 110

Either you count each finger or toe once: 20

or

you reserve a number of toes/fingers x as counter for the number of cycles that you count the remaining ones 20-x

for instance: you could take one hand as counter to count how many cycles you count on the rest of your fingers and toes

so you have 15 fingers/toes as running number

and 0,1,2,3,4,5 fingers on your remaining hand to increase, each time you ran through a cycle

mathematically

(x+1)(20-x) is the number that you can count

-x^2+20x+20

find the maximum

d(-x^2+20x+20)/dx = 0

-2x+20=0

x=10

highest number you can count: (x+10)(20-x)= 11.10 = 110

Edit: okay, this was only one approach .. other approaches give you possibly a higher number ;-)

Using binary, I can get to 2^20-1 or over a million.

Of course, this presumes that I'm agile enough with my toes to be able to hold up my middle toe and all the others down so that I can represent

00000 00100 00000 00000

LFoot RFoot LHand Rhand

and this would be 1x2^12th

Counting in base 5, I can get up to 5x5x5x5 or 625.

22

As high as you like, just keep using your fingers and toes over and over again.

until they forget what number they are on and have to start over or they don't know how to pronounce the next number

Infinity .

to infinity or ro higher just use them over and over again.