February 9, 2009
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There are 10 kinds of people…
I have used, in my signature on different message boards, the phrase: “There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.” I tried to find out who the author was and in my readings found that most people don’t “get it”. I asked someone at work about it and they said you’d have to be a computer geek or engineer to understand (after I explained to her what it meant).
Is that really true? Don’t they teach other numbering systems in math anymore? In my 7th grade math class we learned about binary, octal, and hexadecimal systems. And that was 40 years ago. (I think we even learned other number systems, but those are the ones that stick out because I AM a computer geek.)
You would think in the computer age, when everything we do is just a series of ones and zeroes, that it would be something taught in basic math.
Comments (4)
I never understood any of it
I don’t know that it is. I’m trying to remember the first time I was taught binary, octal and hexadecimal systems. It may well have been my last year in high school, and only in a class I took because I was going to university.
Thinking about it, I agree with you. It should be something taught at a more basic level.
I got it…but only because I was a CIS major in college…before the business school got its hooks into me.
For several summers in college, I had an “internship” with a textbook manufacturer/publisher. All the summer “interns” (meaning: college kids working slave wages) had to work the warehouse inventory/audit. The warehouse manager was a grade A dickwad, and had the brains of a jellyfish. One day, we made up a giant banner for the warehouse doors – “there are three kinds of people: those who can count,and those who can’t.” Glen couldn’t figure it out.
In 8th grade, we had an insane math teacher, Mrs. Weitzel. She made us work in a base-12 number system. We had to make up symbols for the extra two digits. She gave us a huge homework assignment on it to work on over Christmas. For years, I plotted ways to get revenge on her. Now I’d just like to count her toes.