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ChatGPT Will Never Write For Exploring Binary

By Rick Regan  September 16th, 2023

I got an unsolicited email from a company offering to write AI (ChatGPT) generated articles for my site. This is the snippet they sent of their sample article:

Mastering Decimal, Binary, & Two’s Complement Conversion

In the digital world, understanding numerical notations like decimal, binary, and two’s complement can provide a substantial advantage and presents opportunities for improved problem-solving. The journey starts with the basic foundation of decimal …

I did not click through the tracking link to get the rest of the article but it looks like the generic fluff ChatGPT wrote when I asked it about Exploring Binary. It’s worse than fluff actually; I don’t see how knowing numerical notations helps with problem solving.

If you’ve read anything on this site you’d know immediately that I didn’t write that. Will AI ever be able to write an article indistinguishable from one of my own? I don’t think so.

College Notebook: When I Was Taught Floating-Point

By Rick Regan  November 13th, 2013

In my article “Floating-Point Questions Are Endless on stackoverflow.com” I showed examples of the many questions asked that demonstrate lack of knowledge of the most basic property of floating-point — that not all decimal values are representable in binary. In response to a reader’s comment on my article I wrote:

It would be interesting to know how it’s taught today (it’s been a very long time since I was taught it). I can’t imagine though that the person teaching it wouldn’t say — within a sentence or two of saying “floating-point” — that it “can’t represent all decimal numbers accurately”.

That prompted me to look through my box of thirty plus year old college (undergraduate) notebooks. I found notebooks for four classes in which I was taught floating-point. The notes from three of those classes confirm what I thought — that we were warned early of the decimal/binary mismatch. But in the first class of the four — the beginner’s class — it’s less clear what we were told. I’ll show you images of the relevant excerpts from my notes. (I notice I had some elements of cursive in my handwriting back then.)

Continue reading “College Notebook: When I Was Taught Floating-Point”

Exploring Binary On My Apple II

By Rick Regan  February 6th, 2012

I’m reading Steve Wozniak’s 2006 book “iWoz” and this line got me wondering about my own Apple II:

“In every speech I give, I talk to people who are still running Apple IIs, and they say those machines are still running after this many years.”

So I got it out of the attic and powered it up. The dozen or so dead keys notwithstanding, it still works — after 30 years!

Some BASIC Commands I Tried On My Keyboard-Challenged But Otherwise Still Working Apple II
Some BASIC Commands I Tried On My Keyboard-Challenged But Otherwise Still Working Apple II

Continue reading “Exploring Binary On My Apple II”

My Goals for Exploring Binary in 2009

By Rick Regan  December 16th, 2008

Well, it’s been one year! I’m very happy about how things are going, even if I didn’t meet any of my goals! (See below for how I did in 2009.)

This post was motivated by the article “What Are Your Internet Goals for 2009?”, by Daniel Scocco.

Since I am new to blogging (I just started this blog a month ago), my internet goals for 2009 are my goals for Exploring Binary specifically. I’d like to get this blog off the ground before I try anything else!

I’ve been maintaining a long list of things I want to accomplish with this blog, but I whittled it down to the most important goals — all challenging but realistically attainable:

Continue reading “My Goals for Exploring Binary in 2009”

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