As most of you probably already know, binary is the use of the mathematical base 2. Rather than our standard decimal system that has 10 different digits to use, binary only has 2 digits. In our standard system the number 352 means 3 hundreds, 5 tens, and 2 ones. However, in binary, we might have a number like 10110 which means 1 sixteen, 0 eights, 1 four, 1 two, and 0 ones, for a total of twenty-two. Different bases are useful for lots of different things. Binary is mostly used because our current computer design uses the fact that electricity can be reliably measured in either a high (1) or low (0) state. Using this idea, we have computer memory.

It might not be a surprise, given what we’ve talked about with boolean logic, that binary fits in quite nicely since we once again have a system of only two options. The quick transition from boolean algebra to working with binary simply involves switching out all of the T’s with 1’s and all of the F’s with 0’s. All of the things we’ve looked at so far with operators and truth tables is the same. However, now that we’re working with numbers instead of letters/words we have some added benefits which we will explore in this chapter.

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