Right now, count to ten and imagine the numbers in your mind.

You see what you did there to make ten? You put a one in the slot on the left. Each "place" has a value. There is the"ones place", the "tens place place" the "hundredths place." The thing to notice is that these are all powers of ten.


place name	value	power of ten
ones	1	0
tens	10	1
hundreds	100	2
thousands	1000	3

So the number 365 really means

   3 * 10 ²   (which equals 3* 100, or 300)
+  6 * 10 ¹   (= 6*10=60)
+  5 * 10 ⁰   (= 5*1 =5)
=300+60+5 
=365

But why did you only do that at ten? Why not twelve, eight, or sixteen? No good reason. Same reason why the letter "Z" makes a buzzing sound; tis arbitrary. Now, suppose you picked eight to do this with instead of ten. Counting would look like this:

picking eight       regular numbers
   1                                 1
   2                                 2
   3                                 3
   4                                 4
   5                                 5
   6                                 6
   7                                 7
1 0                                 8
1 1                                 9
1 2                               10

"10 would be the number that 4+4 equals. what "10" actually means is

   1 * 8 ¹   (= 1*8=8)
+  0 * 9 ⁰   (= 0*1 =0)
=8+0
=8

We call picking eight using base eight, AKA octal. base ten, what normal people use, is called decimal.

You can do this with base sixteen also; that is called hexadecimal. Here is counting from one to twenty in base sixteen.

  
Hexadicimal       decimal
   1                          1
   2                          2
   3                          3
   4                           4 
   5                          5 
   6                          6
   7                          7
   8                          8
   9                          9
  A                          10
  B                          11
  C                          12
  D                          13
  E                          14
  F                          15
1 0                         16
1 1                         17
1 2                         18
1 3                         19
        1 4                         20

Numbers as letters. I know, I just blew your mind. I'll give you a minute to sit down.
Now, what is the point of all of this? Well, I'm certain you have heard of binary. This is what that is.


	binary	decimal
	1	1
	10	2
	11	3
	100	4
	101	5
	110	6
	111	7
	1000	8

1011 in binary really means: So the number 365 really means

   1 * 2 ³   (which equals 1* 8, or 8)
+  0 * 2 ²   (= 0*4=0)
+  1 * 2 ¹   (= 1*2=2)
+  1 * 1 ⁰   (= 1*1 =1)
=8+0+2+1 
=11

You can represent this on your fingers. Hold out your closed hands in front of you, so you are looking at the nails on eight of your fingers. Your thumbs should be facing (but not pointing!) toward your right and left

Stick out your thumb on your right hand. this represents a one in the ones place. Which is equal to one.

Take that thumb back in. Stick our your index finger on that hand. This is equal to a one in the twos place, which is equal to two.

Keeping the index finger out stick out your thumb again. This is equal to a one in the twos place plus a one in the ones place, which is equal to 2+1, or 3.

now, you want to add one to what you have to that. so you add it to the thumb, which is already up, so you carry it over to the next finger, which is also already up. So, carry it over to the next finger, which is not up yuet. put that finger up. This is equal to a one in the fours place, or a 4.

It is also a very rude gesture and bad luck in China.

You can keep doing this. You have ten fingers so the highest number you can register is: 1111111111 which is 2⁹+2⁸+2⁷+2⁶+2⁵+2⁴+2³+2²+2¹+2⁰.

=512+256+128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1 =1023 which is 2¹⁰ -1 Oh, and if you are wondering what people mean when they say "binary code" they probably just mean either base 2 or ASCII code. ASCII code assigns each letter to a number and represents that number in binary. I am tired of writing, so here is a table for that: