Use The Binary Finger Method To Easily Count To 59,048 Or Higher

Use The Binary Finger Method To Easily Count To 59,048 Or Higher

If you thought you could only count to 10 using your fingers, think again. Using the binary system, you can quickly count into the tens of thousands.

In this video from the TED-Ed YouTube channel, mathematician James Tanton explains how useful your fingers really are when it comes to counting. By assigning your fingers binary values — your right thumb is one and each finger to the left has double the value of the previous finger — you can count to 1,023 without losing track. But if you can bend each of your fingers into three states — down, half-bent, and raised — you can assign more values to your fingers and count to 59,048. It’s possible to count even higher with more hand positions, but at that point you should probably be considering another system.

How high can you count on your fingers? (Spoiler: much higher than 10) [YouTube]


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