• nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    91·
    2 days ago

    Every number system is base 10.

    Binary is base 1+1.
    Ternary is base 2+1.
    Octal is base 7+1.
    Decimal is base 9+1.
    Duodecimal is base B+1.
    Hexadecimal is base F+1.

  • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
    30·
    2 days ago

    So i kinda went on a thought rabbit hole here

    1. I like jokes like this, in part because they only work in written form. Because if they were using base 10 they’d say “You’re a ten”, but base 2 would be “You’re a one zero” (or one oh)

    2. Wait, do people actually say “ten” when expressing two in binary? Do they actually say “one, ten, eleven, one hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and ten…”?

    3. Have I been expressing binary incorrectly?

    4. Am I overthinking this?

    5. Honestly though, my favorite written pun is “Religions are more interested in profits than prophets”

    Anyway, puns are fun. How do you say binary numbers?

    • amda@feddit.nl
      9·
      2 days ago

      People don’t usually change the name of the number when working in different basis so you would in fact just say “ten”. If the actual representation was important you would say “one, zero, one, zero”. I don’t think people would say one thousand and ten as the word thousand is more about the actual number than the string “1000”.

      You can use other round quantity when working on other basis, like a dozen or a gross in base twelve.

      • wieson@feddit.org
        5·
        2 days ago

        Yeah but ten is the name for the concept of this many: iiiiiiiiii. Not for the symbols 1 and 0 in that order.

        So if I said “that’s ten”, I would be looking at “1010”

        If I were to send a “0010” over an interface as a test for example, I would say: “now I’m sending two. Are you recieving two?”

    • Ketram@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      6·
      2 days ago

      Probably overthinking it (i hope). I usually say each binary digit individually, e.g. “one zero” for 10. Just makes more sense to me at least.

    • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      You’re not overthinking it at all and have hit upon an important point. The problem with “ten” is that it’s too easily confused with 1010_2 or 0x0A_16. One-zero base 2 is unambiguous. Also one, ten, eleven etc would get very unwieldy very quickly, and as it already gets unwieldy very quickly even when just quoting digits, that’s why we have hex and octal.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    23·
    2 days ago

    There are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don’t.

  • 843563115848z@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I’m old. This started being a joke, to my knowledge, in the mid-1980s. I’m sure it predates that timeframe. Still a great joke though.

  • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    Both work because the scale is 1-10. Binary just has fewer intermediate steps. Nobody is a binary 7.

      • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        Thanks for the explanation! I’ve only been doing digital logic since 1976 so I’m still a bit confused by it.

        • Landless2029@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 hours ago

          No worries. I have a networking background so I’ll never forget binary.

          0 = 000
          1 = 001
          2 = 010
          3 = 011 4 = 100

          So 100 / 25 = 100 (4 in binary)

      • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
        3·
        2 days ago

        I think they’re saying that on a binary 1 to 10 scale, the range is only (decimal) 2, so a 10/10 for binary is a 2/2 in decimal (where you can only be a 1/2 or 2/2), which is still the highest value.

        • Landless2029@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 days ago

          Considering the artist I think the joke was 2/10 vs 10/10.
          This isn’t XKCD. Still to each their own.

          I forwarded this to some network engineer friends and they got a kick out of it.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, always bothered me that we don’t refer to them by their highest digit. That would make them unambiguous.

        • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          But are there many scenarios where you don’t already need that anyways, just for writing out the digits of a number in the given base?

          I mean, I can imagine a scenario where you might talk about base 420 on a theoretical level, without explicitly counting up until 418, 419, 420 (as e.g. Ϡ, Ϣ, 10). But honestly, you could even still refer to that as “Base 419” and it would still be fairly obvious what you mean, since you are using multiple digits rather than just one. I guess, you could also write it as “Base 4199” (so with a subscript 9 to represent what we normally call “Base 10”), if you want to be precise about it.