ISABEL BLACKMORE
HOW DO YOU READ BINARY NUMBERS?
We count in decimal – that’s multiples of 10, or base 10. That means we use 10 distinct symbols to write down all numbers: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Perhaps having 10 digits on our hands helps with the maths. It was not always this way – duodecimal, or base 12, was a very popular system: 12 inches to the foot, 12 pence to a shilling, 12 zodiac signs, 12 months in a year and 2x 12 hours in a day. In duodecimal maths we use 12 symbols to write down all the numbers: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B. Duodecimal is superior for mental arithmetic because it has four non-trivial factors: it is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, compared to the decimal system, which has only two non-trivial factors: 2 and 5.