The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison, with ...

When anyone is first introduced to the topic of digital computers, they are almost invariably told that these machines are based on binary (base-2) logic and the binary number system, where “binary” ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. They find that the former Mangarevans combined base-10 ...

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In positional systems, as mentioned earlier, the number represented is multiplied by the base each time you move to the left of a position and is always divided by the base each time you move to the ...

To convert a decimal number to binary by repeated division, first subtract the largest possible power of two, and keep subtracting the next largest possible power form the remainder, marking 1 in each ...