Thread: Bases

i PLEASE NEED HELP WITH 4010 base five minus 1234 base 5!! please and thank you I know that the numbers add to more than five so they need to be different

I'd just use the usual method taught in schools, 'borrowing', but it's a little difficult to illustrate on here.

Instead you could use 'equal addition' as follows.

4010-1234

adding 1 to both numbers

=4011-1240

adding 10 to both numbers

=4021-1300

adding 200 to both numbers

=4221-2000

=2221

It's rather less efficient though.

is this base five then? and would I use the same method for all bases? thank you so much for your quick response

Well, you said it was base 5...?

I wouldn't use the method I posted. I'd use 'borrowing'. Yes it works for any base.

Hello, cathyharris4!

Have you never ever done a subtraction in other bases?

In C4, we can't subtract 4 from 0, so we "borrow" from C3.




The "1" we borrowed represents "5", so we have:




Subtract in C4 and we have:




In C3, we can't subtract 3 from 0, so we "borrow" from C2.
But C2 has "0"; we can't borrow.

So we must borrow from C1.




Now we can borrow from C2:




And we can complete the subtraction: