Friday, November 24, 2006

Binary Love

Suppose you are working in the binary number system. Not on a computer - just for the heck of it. Someone asks you what is 10 binary divided by 11 binary. You can cheat and do it in decimal and you know it is 2/3 or .666666(ad infinitum)

So you can represent 2/3 in binary as 10/11. But what about the .666666? First of all, that point in front of the .666666 - that point is usually called a decimal point. But if we're working in binary, is it a binary point?

Strangely enough, I think 2/3 translated is: .1010101010101010 (ad infinitum) This is really the series: 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/32 + 1/128 + 1/512... which appears to have a limit of 2/3.

It's a weird kind of fun
To stick with zero and one.

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