““This quest to take a problem and see what happens in different situations is called generalizing, and it is this force that drives mathematics forward. Mathematicians constantly want to find solutions and patterns which apply to as many situations as possible, i.e. are as general as possible. A maths puzzle is not complete when you merely find an answer, a maths puzzle is complete when you've then tried to generalize it to other situations as well-and minds including Leonard Euler and Lord Kelvin have excelled in mathematics by displaying just this kind of curiosity. Because mathematicians like the puzzles which work on the pure number rather than the symbolic digit and the system we happen to be writing our numbers down in, there is a sense that, when a puzzle works only in one given base, there is something rather, well, 'secind class' about it. Mathematicians do not like things which work only in base-10; it is only because we have ten fingers that we find that system interesting at all. Mathematics is the search for universal, not base-specific, truth.””
