[Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] In the usual decimal system, the number 17 (that is, a 1 followed by a 7) indicates that you have to calculate 10 + 7 × 1 (17 = 1 × 10 + 7 ...

Conversion of binary to decimal numbers is often needed in firmware. And it’s done easily enough if multiplication and division by ten are acceptable.

The formulation of the binary number system essentially laid the groundwork for digital circuitry, computers, and the field of computer science, as we know it in today’s technologically-advanced ...

Decimal notation describes numbers using the digits 1 through 10. Binary notation describes them using just two digits, 1 and 0, where each bit in a string represents a power of 2.

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 ...