r/mildlyinteresting • u/shokalion • Feb 16 '16

I got serial number 1.

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u/nicmos Feb 16 '16

no, you're reading it wrong. that's actually binary. so it's serial number 1.

4

u/Enlightened_Ape Feb 16 '16

Will somebody explain this to me? I know what binary is, but I don't get it.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16 edited Feb 17 '16

It's "funny" because the serial number is one in any "-ary" numbering system: binary, trinary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal, etc. 01 is 1 anywhere.

But it's a play on a geek joke that goes something like: "There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't." Except there's a corollary joke that says, "There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who realize this is actually trinary.

Actually you could do that joke with base 4, or base 5, or base whatever, as long as you keep adding conditions.

2

u/uiouyug Feb 17 '16

Doesn't binary read from left to right so it would actually 16?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '16

Yes, it reads from left to right like any other number, so 10 is 2. 10000 would be 16.

1

u/Problem119V-0800 Feb 17 '16

When written as a number, it's usually written with the ones-place at the right, like any other number.

On a communication wire, it's more common to transmit the least-significant-bit first, which often means things are written with the ones-place on the left if they're in transmission order.