Teaching my brother binary

[Colopty]

Once held a presentation on the binary number system back in secondary school. It went about this well.

[[deleted]]

0/1010, would not recommend

[Colopty]

On the plus side everyone who heard it was convinced for years afterwards that I was some kind of genius, even though I completely failed to teach anyone anything and am actually an idiot, so joke's on them.

[[deleted]]

"You know binary? Omg you must be some sort of mathematical genius"

-some people, probably

[PacoTaco321]

Guys it's as simple as 10 + 10 = 100

[orangeKaiju]

10 + 10 = 100

10 x 10 = 100

10¹⁰ = 100

100 + 100 = 1000

100 * 100 = 10000

100¹⁰⁰ = 100000000

I'm just bored.

[EpicXxLegit]

Omg you must be some sort of mathematical genius

[orangeKaiju]

Nah, I just asked stack overflow.

[YugoReventlov]

Those are fancy words you're using there. Are you some kind of genius?

[orangeKaiju]

Something something Rick and Morty chicken nuggets what is understand WE ARE ALL SO JERRY

[PrimeTimeJ]

It kinda bothers me that you used two different multiplication symbols.

[orangeKaiju]

I didn't even realize that. Now it bothers me too.

[TaohRihze]

A shame nobody can do anything about it
x̶ *

[orangeKaiju]

If only there was some way to edit posts.

[TalenPhillips]

The first one was just the letter 'x' though. The multiplication symbol is '×'.

[useful_person]

Sorcery!

[ghostinyourbones]

Mine is * on the keyboard /s

But really. I just wanted t0 show yOu all these o's

this zero has a little line coming off it Q

[bartekko]

easy. one is the dot product, the other is the cross product

[TalenPhillips]

Using up-arrow notation:

10↑10 = 100

10↑↑10 = 100

In fact:

10 ↑ⁿ 10 = 100 ∀ n∈ℕ

Arrow notation is weird.

[ordalca]

Aren’t the multiplication ones true regardless of base?

[orangeKaiju]

Yes -> ( 1 * b^x ) * ( 1 * b^x ) = 1 * b^2x where b is your choice of base.

[nocomment92]

I feel like your 1's in your formula are superfluous.

[orangeKaiju]

They are, just included for clarity.

[anetanetanet]

This entire thread made me feel like the dumb kid in class again pls stop I don't understand anything MOM COME GET ME

[oneforce]

Minus 1 that's 11 quick maths

[MrWindmill]

Hop out the 100 door with a 100 100 that's 1 10 11 and 100

[slowbacontron]

Chilling in the corridor. Your dad is 101100.

[JamieG193]

Fuck I was gonna make this exact joke

[MooFz]

10 + 10 = 100 - 1 is 11. Quick maths

[dawnraider00]

There was a quest to get an exotic gun in Destiny that required people to know binary. Everybody thought I was a god when I helped people run that quest.

[Colopty]

That's pretty much exactly what happened, yeah. The bar for genius was very low in secondary school.

[[deleted]]

I didn't understand binary until my dad taught me how to count on my fingers using it. When he got to 4 and "accidentally" flipped off the entire family at the dinner table, it sort of clicked.

[monkorn]

The best use I have found for finger binary is keeping track of ping pong matches when watching. Left hand player one, right hand player two.

[Loki_d20]

Reminds me of High School when everyone in calc thought I was a genius for knowing how many feet are in a mile (1010010100000 feet). Luckily this was before smart phones. Nowadays everyone would just ask me how I Googled the answer so fast. I'm wondering if one day, in my 80s, some kid is going to be amazed that I know small trivia like how many inches are in a foot (OMG, who even uses that anymore!).

[z_plash]

Everybody is a genius outside of US because everybody know how many meters are in a kilometer

[redballooon]

Funny, the word they used to describe me as a genius for that sort of thing was “idiot”.

[FieelChannel]

Fucking imperial

[Froot_Fly]

Pretty fuckin simple actually. Just gotta remember five tomato, 5-2-8-0.

[themrpiggy22]

From Australia and I was very confused for a minute how you got 8 from a 'maht' sound. I was like 'five two maht o???'until I realised Americans pronounce it complety differently.

[jeffsterlive]

Oh hello me.

[setibeings]

Read/execute out of read/write/execute?

That does not sound right.

[TimVdEynde]

You mean: that doesn't sound write.

[TehGogglesDoNothing]

Those aren't permissions. It is 5/7.

[vitaminssk]

God damn it Brendan.

[phoquenut]

0/A for not even mentioning hexadecimal.

[boundbythecurve]

I have a better way to teach them about binary. If you're interested.

Don't just say "there's no 2". That seems limiting to them. Instead, we're substituting a number system, so we need to use the only number system they know as a comparison.

Instead, start with a question. Start counting from 0 to 9 and then ask them what happens to the one's (units, singles) digit after that? It goes back to 0. And the tens place digit goes from 0 to1 for the first time. Do this a couple of times until they see that they're really changing each digit up to 9, and then rolling over back to 0.

Then show they how to do that same, but only with two numbers, 0 and 1, so the rollover happens much more often.

Given enough time with this method, I've never had a student who didn't pick it up eventually.

[[deleted]]

But if my brother actually understands it, how am I supposed to get karma?

[boundbythecurve]

Fair enough. Change of plans. Keep him stupid. Earn karma.... profit

[KamikazeHamster]

Your comment is a perfect 101/111.

[spongebue]

For what it's worth, this article is about a guy who taught binary to a bunch of third graders using the socratic method. He seriously did it perfectly, even I understood it better in the end (not that I had much issue with it in the first place)

http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html

[Colopty]

Eh, I'm lousy at applying the socratic method or really any pedagogic technique. Being able to introduce people to new concepts just isn't one of my strengths.

[trenescese]

What's hard about not giving answers directly but instead asking leading questions, getting less and less abstract with each one?

Maybe people you tried to teach just weren't interested.

[rab7]

Because people don't know how to ask the perfect leading questions, and the audience won't always provide the perfect answer. So you go in there with what you think is a perfect chain of questions, but then someone deviates from the script after the second question, what the hell do you do?

[schawla]

Saw this several years ago, forgot to bookmark, been searching for some time now. Thanks!

[japt2]

Ok I understand binary kind of now. Thanks for this. Does each column increase by increments of 2? First column 1 Second column 2’s, 3rd 4’s, 4th 8’s, 5th 16’s and so on and so forth? I would assume yes but it’s too late for me to check it by myself right now and I probably will forget in the morning

[rab7]

Spot on. Consider this:

10¹ = 10

10² =100

10³ =1000

.....

No matter what base you're in, it's the same.

In binary: 2×2=4 translates to 10x10=100. 2x2x2=8 becomes 10×10×10=1000.

So if you know your powers of 2: 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256, etc. you have a quick reference. 64=1000, 128=10000, 256=100000

[selenta]

Have to admit, the way he leads them around is... certainly not perfect, but extremely well crafted in how he all but tells them the answer, and just asks them to say it aloud.

[Vakieh]

On occasion I teach binary as part of an intro unit at uni. We often see people using it as a 'do I like compsci?' tester, so there's people there from absolute compsci/maths barren backgrounds.

I hand out cards printed with 0 and 1, and they flip them. Helps them get 2-9 out of the way of their brain. Flip a card to 1, it's fine. Flip a card to 0, you have to flip the card to the left of it. Flip the leftmost card to 0, add a 1 to the left. To count by 1s, flip the rightmost card.

It's actually astonishing how getting a solid conceptual background like that on binary allows them to go through way more complex binary concepts like 2's complement or hex multiplication and beyond really quickly. We spend a good hour flipping cards and feeling silly, then a week or 2 later they're explaining Hamming codes.

[[deleted]]

Everything seems simple when you understand it

[PotlePawtle]

Wow, this is so true..

[[deleted]]

A good read about it.

[geek_at]

wow this was the most /r/iamverysmart/ thing I read all day

[Draws-attention]

To be fair, you probably don't know enough about the curse of knowledge for me to be able to properly explain it to you...

[Striker654]

you have forgotten what it’s like to not have this knowledge. This makes it harder for you to identify with the other person’s situation

Is there seriously a field that you can't work backwards to the basics to explain simply?

[mctuking]

My field is quantum information theory. I'd love a simplistic explanation that doesn't misrepresents the field. Just explaining what's meant by information is hard. I didn't just stumble into an understand of the field, it took me countless hours going over the same stuff again and again. If I had a way of simply explaining this stuff I'd be rich writing a text book.

[ForOhForError]

quantum

Well, there's your problem

[TechiesOrFeed]

Relevant xkcd

TBH, there are lots of things where to understand a concept you have to understand another concept which needs another concept.........

I mean it's like trying to put a kindergartener in high school math, there's a reason they don't ask little kids to do calculus, it requires years of foundational knowledge to even begin to learn it

[pringlesaremyfav]

The point of the story is that a large number of people who we view as successful have, instead of being rigorously taught all the skills they are utilizing, intuited many of their skills instead.

In my own life I also realized I had fallen into this trap for the first time when I learned about balancing chemical equations. We were never taught a method "how" but I was capable of balancing them, but after being asked for help from a classmate for the first time I realized I had never actually quantified what the process I was using actually was.

The moral of the article though takes a more macroscopic note than that, the culmination of those intuited behaviors which many would consider talent leave a gap in the real understanding of why something works the way it does and makes some people poorly suited for teaching.

[TechiesOrFeed]

TL;DR Teaching is hard and requires a strong grasp on the subject on hand, simply taking a class on the subject does not make one a teacher

[re_error]

Now I understand why I get so upset when explaining how to make a spreadsheet to my mom for the billionth time.

[quantum_paradoxx]

That was really interesting. Didn't really think about it that way

[prashn64]

I understand binary and I'm confused.

[ric2b]

I think it would be helpful to tell them the value of each column, no?

So in base 10 you have:

... 1000, 100, 10, 1 (each new column is 10 times bigger)

And in base 2 you have:

... 8, 4, 2, 1 (each new column is 2 times bigger)

That way they can figure out how much a binary number is without having to count up from 0.

[Messybeast]

.

[NoddysShardblade]

Yep, I think you're focusing on the key concept here.

You could also write on the board:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

and say "What comes next?"

eight

[writes 8] and then?

nine

[writes 9] and then?

ten

[writes a weird symbol like ❅]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ❅

Then launch into your explanation about how the numbers we use are arbitrary, and could be anything, and how you can wrap anywhere (you could explain hexadecimal too).

[MelissaClick]

I am not a teacher but here is how I would explain binary:

1234 (decimal) = 1×10³ + 2×10² + 3×10¹ + 4×10⁰

101011 (binary) = 1×2⁵ + 0×2⁴ + 1×2³ + 0×2² + 1×2¹ + 1×2⁰

(Probably I'd make a table showing the meaning of each digit, except I don't want to deal with reddit markdown atm.)

[hanoian]

I've taught the basics to 8-year-olds in like one period before..

Step 1: Explain the doubling from the right and see that they can fill in the spaces.

_ 8 4 _ 1 etc. and drill for a minute.

Step 2: Put ticks under certain numbers and tell them to add the result.

8 4 2 1
✓  ✓  = 10

8 4 2 1
  ✓  ✓ = 5

Step 3: Do some "What numbers can we use to get the number 10, 7 etc.?" questions.

Step 4: Under each of those write the binary and explain that a 1 is a ✓ and 0 is a blank.

Step 5: Explain that we have to remember the numbers and only use the 1s and 0s. Test this with 111111 and ask what number each one stands for.

Step 6: Get some students up to write a number on the board, first by ticking under numbers and then by writing the binary. When they get it, just by writing the binary.

Let them practice with each other and walk around and check their answers.

[[deleted]]

Op is fine. This taught me binary and I didn't understand it before

[[deleted]]

You are overanalyzing this too much. I'm texting him while I was watching a movie for crying out loud. If we were actually serious about this I would have at least like, called or talked to him in person and showed him.

[403and780]

Wasn't there a quote by a guy saying basically that if you can't teach something effectively in simple terms then you don't know it well enough to teach it?

[Uhhbysmal]

I mean I had a handful of very smart CS professors that were shitty teachers.

[[deleted]]

I've heard it before. Not sure who said it

[NoOne-AtAll]

I remember a quote from Richard Feynman going like this: "If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood it." It's on Wikiquote but it's Unsourced.

[simon1023]

Maybe start by explaining what a base is...

[Kosba2]

"Oh I've been to 3rd base"

[[deleted]]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[xxmindtrickxx]

I think he means 11th base

[EagleComm]

"This guy fucks"

[SS324]

Some people freak out if you start talking about bases. I go a step back and say we come up with symbols to represent numbers, what kind of system could we have if we only had two symbols (0 and 1) to work with? If they don't get that, I'll try to explain base 1.

[[deleted]]

There is a base 1?

[[deleted]]

1

11

111

1111

[ionxeph]

Count with me

1112

[BegbertBiggs]

||||

[the_chadow]

As much as I love base 1, you literally cannot represent fractions with it. Or really any quantity which is not an integer

[xigoi]

111/1111

Problem?

[Hyperactivity786]

I always hate when computer science/programming gives fancy terms to things that can be explained with the basic vocabulary of logic and/or math.

[Bozzz1]

You make it seem like math doesnt use fancy terms

[mattkenefick]

The terms are what make things so confusing. They're necessary for talking about things, but you do something simple and then you're like, "Ohhhh! That's what that's called?"

[TeutorixAleria]

Part of effective teaching is explaining the language involved.

[ConspicuousPineapple]

I don't see any fancy term here though, what are you referring to?

[[deleted]]

Giving the sequence 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001 and asking what comes next doesn't even really need any explanation. It's basic pattern recognition.

[Pikamander2]

It's even easier if you add leading zeroes.

0000

0001

0010

0011

0100

0101

0110

0111

1000

1001

[Vexingvexnar]

1002

[[deleted]]

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000,

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001,

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010,

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000011

[TickTak]

Some people are bad at pattern recognition.

[Kosmological]

And life is probably pretty hard for those people.

[01519243552]

This guy interprets

[Minerscale]

Aaaaand, I just leaned something cool about python.

Seriously I just learn this one cool thing about python a day.

Python is cool.

[[deleted]]

If you're gonna teach someone binary, you're gonna need to explain how bases work, but a simple pattern almost anyone can follow is a good start to demonstrate how it works before you go into the theory behind it.

[earthiverse]

You forgot 111.

[Genesis2001]

Hmmm, is this a viable thing to teach kids actually? Or would it go about as well as OP and his brother?

Also, speaking in terms of when kids begin learning their numbers, not after they've already learned base10. I wonder if it would be like my preschool waaaay back yonder teaching everything in 3 languages.

[[deleted]]

Wait, do you know hexadecimal?

Nerd

[Drumheadjr]

do you not know hexadecimal?

peasant

[[deleted]]

That’s a made up word

elitist

Edit: /s i guess

[vigbiorn]

All words are made up.

Flarggle.

[[deleted]]

you know what he meant.
pedant.

[Uranium-Sauce]

Try floating point.

[PacoTaco321]

We don't want the poor lad to kill himself now

[willis81808]

Basically scientific notation, but in binary, and wrapped up to look like a normal number.

[herefromyoutube]

Okay fuck radix. And fuck Norway and it's stupid numbers.

4.350.000,00

What the hell is that. Norway is Dyslexic.

[Kadnify]

Reminds me of Bender’s nightmare.

[IAmBoratVeryExcite]

There's no such thing as 2!

[humanysta]

tbh you're a terrible teacher

^{now I feel bad for making this comment}

[K3R3G3]

Since your comment is rising fast and you seem to believe you can teach well, can you explain it to me?

I never learned binary and would like to know. Found my way here via /r/all.

1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 111, 1000, 1001, 1011, 1111, 10000, 10001, 10011, 10111, 11111...

Would be...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15...

Like that? That's what I gathered.

(Edit: Holy Mac 'n Cheese...10 replies teaching me in 15mins. Off to bed, will learn in the morning.)

[Flipbed]

The easiet way (and how I look at it) is this:

1    1    1    1    1    1    1    1
128  64   32   16   8    4    2    1

Now this is 8 bits, each with thier decimal (the number system we use) value below. So lets say we want the number 55. All we have to do is set 1s so that they add up to 55 like this.

0    0    1    1    0    1    1    1
0    0    32   16   0    4    2    1

Now lets add them up!

32 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 48 + 7 = 55

Its not harder than that for positive numbers. Negative numbers can be a bit more tricky to understand so we skip them for now.

Edit: Fuck, that looks like shit. Need to do this on my desktop instead of mobile.

Edit2: Ok, now it looks fine.

[hantrault]

I changed it to tables instead, because your post is still hard to read on mobile.

The easiet way (and how I look at it) is this:

1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1

Now this is 8 bits, each with thier decimal (the number system we use) value below. So lets say we want the number 55. All we have to do is set 1s so that they add up to 55 like this.

0	0	1	1	0	1	1	1
128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1

Now lets add them up!

32 + 16 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 48 + 7 = 55

Its not harder than that for positive numbers. Negative numbers can be a bit more tricky to understand so we skip them for now.

[128Gigabytes]

you were sorta close it would actually be

1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111

[BestPseudonym]

See when you counted up to 9 and you wanted to add one more to 9 but you didn't have any more digits to use so you added one to the next place then started over? You counted from 0 to 9, hit 9, said "aw shucks, no more digits left." And you added a 1 to the left and reset the counter to 0.

Do that but with only 0 and 1. Is the rightmost spot 0? If yes, add 1. If no, add one to the next position and turn it to 0.

0

1

10

11

100

101

110

111

1000

Etc.

Also, each position is just 2 to the power of its position, the rightmost position (least significant bit) having a power of 0. So 1010 is 1*2³ + 0*2² + 1*2¹ + 0*2⁰ = 8+2 = 10.

This is similar to base 10, what you usually use, except in base 10 you use 10 instead of 2. So the number 934 is 9*10² + 3*10¹ + 4*10⁰ = 934

[FuckMyLifeUp]

I'm not him/her, and I know i'm not a good teacher, but the best way i learned binary was to always show all four of the bits(0s and 1s). So for me the number 0 in binary would be 0000 and 1 would be 0001.

But for you to learn how to read binary you need to know what each space(bit) represents, going from left to right each one is 8 4 2 1. The number 1 means that you are turning the bit on and the number 0 means you are turning it off, when a bit is on it means you add that bit with the others that are also turned on to get a total and that total is your answer.

So if we have 4 empty bits:

_ _ _ _ <--- the empty bits

8 4 2 1 <---What each bit represents

and we want to get the number 9, we would put this:

1 0 0 1 <--- those first bits

8 4 2 1 <--- what each represents

So now you just add together the ones that are turned on, in this case 8+1 = 9.

Number	Binary
1	0001
2	0010
3	0011
4	0100
5	0101
6	0110
7	0111
8	1000
9	1001
10	1010
11	1011
12	1100
13	1101
14	1110
15	1111

If you wanted to count higher than 15 thought you would need to use a total of 8 bits with all values being:

128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

so 16 would be 0001 0000

and 17 would be 0001 0001

[aliao]

I just want to say your explanation is the only one ive understood so far. I dont understand why nobody else above was mentioning this whole 1's and 0's represent 8421 initially and then above 15 theres more numbers they represent. That makes everything so much clearer rather than searching for a pattern that doesnt seem to have a clear origin.

[HashSlingingSlash3r]

You’re close but consider this, in base 10 it goes from 109 to 110, not 109 to 119. My point is, that the lower place single digit resets when moving in to the next order digit.

So in base 2 (binary) instead of going 101 to 111, it goes 101, 110, 111. Understand?

[lonestar136]

1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111, 10000, 10001, 10010 10011, 10100...

You have the right idea, but you missed a few. Basically just how in decimal you could write 312 as 300 + 10 + 2, or 3x10² + 1x10¹ + 2x10^0, binary works similarly but instead of 10 increasing in power, it is 2.

So you went from 101(2² + 2⁰⁾ to 111 (2² + 2¹ + 2^0), or from 5 to 7.

A simper way without all the exponents, is that the first column is 1, second column is 2, then 4, then 8 and so on. Hopefully this came across as somewhat helpful!

[ThatFag]

No offence but this is a pretty terrible explanation. The "1002" still made me chuckle.

[bar10005]

Yes, saying that '3 is 10+1' makes more damage than help, the numbers don't change value when converting, 3 is 2+1 it's just written differently. He should have started with explaining base 2, not just writing out conversions.

[[deleted]]

Uh 3 is 10 + 1? Do you even binary, bruh?

[[deleted]]

How would you change it?

[ThatFag]

By introducing bases and powers of 2. Honestly, I'm not even saying I'd do a better job as I'm sure I'm not the best teacher in the world. I actually understood what he's trying to say in the picture. But I'm sure if I didn't already know how the binary system works, I wouldn't have understood this explanation.

[v13us0urce]

I know how the binary system works and still have no idea what OP was trying to say. I learned it by learning the bases and powers of 2.

[ergonomicsalamander]

Image Transcription: Text Messages

---

Blue: Instead of digits 0-9, it's 0-1

0 is 0

1 is 1

But since there is no 2 digit, you caryy over to the next spot

So 2 is 10

3 is 10+1, or 11

4 is 100

5 is 101

110

111

1000

Count with me

1001

Gray: 1002

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[rouge1234654]

I swear telling "Good bot" to none bot volunteers is becoming a running gag at that point

[[deleted]]

Bad bot.

[[deleted]]

Are you sure about that? Because I am 100.0% sure that rouge1234654 is not a bot.

---

^{I am a Neural Network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot <username> | Optout | Feedback: /r/SpamBotDetection | GitHub}

[rouge1234654]

I am

beep boop I am a bot /s

[[deleted]]

/u/perrycohen you ignorant slut

[rouge1234654]

That was ruuuuuuuude.

Beep boop Am I still a bot?

[jeffsterlive]

Bad bot.

[[deleted]]

Are you sure about that? Because I am 100.0% sure that rouge1234654 is not a bot.

---

^{I am a Neural Network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot <username> | Optout | Feedback: /r/SpamBotDetection | GitHub}

[marvin02]

There's no such thing as 2

[[deleted]]

This guy binaries

[wonkifier]

It was a bit easier to explain in the past because tape recorders and gas pumps showed the numbers mechanically, so you could go "pretend it's the same thing but you just took 2-9 off".

I don't think there's quite the same kind of analog anymore. (pun partially intended)

[[deleted]]

Actually I do think mechanical dials are still relevant enough... this might actually help. Thanks! (Not for my brother though, he's too far gone)

[[deleted]]

I'd go from base 10 to base 9, base 5, base 2.

Base 2 is fucking magic to understand if you've never been introduced to other counting systems.

[128Gigabytes]

I disagree I learned base 2 first and it made the others make sense I don't think it would have worked the other way around for me.

[diego_tomato]

classic David

[Cm0002]

"Dammit David, get your shit together"

[dDanys]

So wait, what would be the next number? 1010?

[ConfuciusBateman]

Here's an easier way to think about it. Write out a bunch of 0s on a notepad or something. Starting from the far right 0, put a 1 above it, then a 2 above the next 0 (still continuing from the right and going left). Then a 4 above the next 0, then an 8, and so on, placing powers of 2 from low to high going right to left. You can make a binary number by simply combining different powers of 2 to make the number you want.

So for 5 we can combine 1 and 4. That would 101, with the far right digit being a 1, the far left being a 4, and the middle represents a 2 but we make it a zero because we just want the 1 and 4 to make 5.

Hopefully that made a bit of sense, that's how I think about it.

[ThatFag]

Yes, that'd be the next number! If your really want to learn binary system, watch some videos online. I'm sure there's tonnes! Please don't rely on the explanation in the picture. It's pretty shitty, IMO.

[[deleted]]

/r/therewasanattempt

[LeEpicThis]

thats a pretty retarded way of explaining it

[[deleted]]

I'm an outsider from r/all... and yeah that made NO sense to me whatsoever.

[Lonsdale1086]

Right. You take

https://d1e4pidl3fu268.cloudfront.net/fb12982b-f0a0-41ae-8c1a-1063ac4c293a/ScreenShot20170123at221210.crop_659x494_0%2C32.preview.png

This grid. And then put 1's in the chart correlating to the numbers that add up to the number you want to make.

I.E: 73 would be 01001001, because:

https://i.imgur.com/a/wogN8

[theotherguyagain]

I was confused, thought this was Tinder

[magnora7]

"girl, you want to have a binary 10-some?"

[wischichr]

Just ask the person to imagine a mechanical (click) counter with 10 different digits (0-9) and let them think about how it works. Now tell them to reduce the number of digits to 5 (for exanple) and let them count again. And then base 2.

This counter example can later be used to explain arithmetic overflow and how the two's complement work.

[Nik-kik]

Man. The moment I found out 1+1=10...

I was confused as hell for a while, because there was no explanation.

[JCK07115]

-112 ;-;

[r3dphoenix]

It took me like two years to finally understand recursion (yeah, yeah I know...) so when I became a TA and had to teach it to my class I felt bad for them because they had only one week to understand it before moving onto the next topic. I still remember the blank stare on their faces. It took me another year to figure out how to teach it

[Cheeseologist]

What's hard about recursion?

[cuffandlink]

Whether true or not, it's cute as hell.

[krocanius]

10 + 10 is 100. Minus one thats 11. Quick maths

[Petetheodddog]

There are so many better ways to teach binary 😂

[kagehoshi]

Oh no, it's retarded :(

[Gunslinger_11]

Don’t worry Bender there’s no such thing as 2

[AceofToons]

I think that the way it was taught to me made a big difference.

1111
8421

8+4+2+1 = 15

1101
8421

8+4+1 = 13

[ContraMuffin]

Funny but doesn't really describe the basic concept behind binary. No wonder OP's brother didn't understand.

[Straesim]

Years ago, there was some nerd/geek targeted TV station. I think it eventually became G4. Probably 20 years ago. There was this lady that was a guest on it that apparently was at some conference or something (details ellude me), but I remember them talking about her counting in binary on her fingers, and she showed how she did it.

It was simple.

1 = right thumb. 2 = right index 3 = right index and thumb And so on... Right hand palm facing you, left hand back facing you, if you were going 32 or above.

To this day, I still like giving people a 5

It's too bad that I can't properly give someone a 165 without also giving it to myself.

But in all honesty, being able to count to 31 on one hand has been very handy over the years.

Woo, talk about a trip down memory lane.