16 (number) old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent a hexadecimal digit from
Thumb position the third ledger line in bass clef notation for the double bass). To play passages in this register, the player shifts his hand out from behind the neck and flattens it out, using the side of the thumb to press down the string. When playing in thumb position, the use of the fourth finger is replaced by the third finger, as the fourth finger becomes too short to produce a reliable tone. Bass instruction books often teach thumb position by having the player place the left-hand thumb on the high G note (on the third leger line in bass clef