Comments on: How I Taught My Mother Binary Numbers http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/ Binary Numbers, Binary Code, and Binary Logic Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:37:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: pete wilson http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/comment-page-1/#comment-5578 pete wilson Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:02:35 +0000 http://www.exploringbinary.com/?p=236#comment-5578 Rick -- Thanks for taking the trouble to write this up. Very interesting. I'm mainly impressed by your evident commitment to effective pedagogy and its priceless rewards: "the light bulb went on :-)" Nice! Rick — Thanks for taking the trouble to write this up. Very interesting. I’m mainly impressed by your evident commitment to effective pedagogy and its priceless rewards: “the light bulb went on :-) ” Nice!

]]> By: Rick Regan http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/comment-page-1/#comment-4419 Rick Regan Sun, 31 Oct 2010 02:21:47 +0000 http://www.exploringbinary.com/?p=236#comment-4419 Sue, Yes, starting at "the top" is the way the conversion from decimal to powers of two works. That's the way I explained the conversion of 17 and 56 (notice how I wrote the powers of two in descending order -- 17 = 16 + 1 and 56 = 32 + 16 + 8 -- reflecting starting at "the top"). At the point of the text you quoted, we were just trying to build the binary number from the already computed list of powers of two. I could have built it in any order, but it seemed natural -- at the time at least -- to build it from right to left. So this is a two-step process: conversion from decimal to powers of two, which must proceed "top down," and conversion from powers of two to binary, which can be done in any order. I should have wrote more explicitly about the algorithm of the first step (I just edited the article as such); as for the second step, the next time I teach someone I'll think about which order makes more sense, if any (I can't recall if I put any thought into different orders at the time). Thanks for the feedback! Sue,

Yes, starting at “the top” is the way the conversion from decimal to powers of two works. That’s the way I explained the conversion of 17 and 56 (notice how I wrote the powers of two in descending order — 17 = 16 + 1 and 56 = 32 + 16 + 8 — reflecting starting at “the top”).

At the point of the text you quoted, we were just trying to build the binary number from the already computed list of powers of two. I could have built it in any order, but it seemed natural — at the time at least — to build it from right to left.

So this is a two-step process: conversion from decimal to powers of two, which must proceed “top down,” and conversion from powers of two to binary, which can be done in any order. I should have wrote more explicitly about the algorithm of the first step (I just edited the article as such); as for the second step, the next time I teach someone I’ll think about which order makes more sense, if any (I can’t recall if I put any thought into different orders at the time).

Thanks for the feedback!

]]> By: Sue VanHattum http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/comment-page-1/#comment-4418 Sue VanHattum Sat, 30 Oct 2010 15:17:40 +0000 http://www.exploringbinary.com/?p=236#comment-4418 >I then took 17 and said “OK, does it have a 1 in it? Yes. Let’s write 1 for yes and 0 for no in the blanks. Does it have a 2? No, write down 0. 4? No, write 0. 8? No, write 0. 16? Yes, write 1.” How do you know it doesn't have a 2 if you start at the bottom, from 1? I always start at the top, 16 in this case. Then once I've taken the 16, all that's left is a 1. >I then took 17 and said “OK, does it have a 1 in it? Yes. Let’s write 1 for yes and 0 for no in the blanks. Does it have a 2? No, write down 0. 4? No, write 0. 8? No, write 0. 16? Yes, write 1.”

How do you know it doesn’t have a 2 if you start at the bottom, from 1? I always start at the top, 16 in this case. Then once I’ve taken the 16, all that’s left is a 1.

]]> By: krish http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/comment-page-1/#comment-4232 krish Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:14:37 +0000 http://www.exploringbinary.com/?p=236#comment-4232 Thanks You ,very very helpful Thanks You ,very very helpful

]]> By: Michael Jones http://www.exploringbinary.com/how-i-taught-my-mother-binary-numbers/comment-page-1/#comment-4231 Michael Jones Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:44:05 +0000 http://www.exploringbinary.com/?p=236#comment-4231 I learned binary numbers in a math class and it is very confusing. I think you did a very good job on this. Thank you Michael I learned binary numbers in a math class and it is very confusing. I think you did a very good job on this.

Thank you

Michael

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