Modern Computers Are:

  • digital
  • binary
  • electronic

Modern computers are binary. They are built out of mechanisms that represent numbers as digits, just as the gears in our example do.

However, those gears represented decimal ("base-10") numbers. These numbers are so familiar to us and so comfortable to us that it is difficult for us to think of representing numbers any other way. Anthropologists tell us that we are so comfortable with decimal numbers because we we have ten fingers.


But there are other ways to represent these favorite numbers of ours.
There is a difference between a number, which is a mathematical concept ("nine"), and the way that number is represented: e.g., as the following character: 9 .

The mathematical concept of "nine" can be represented in a number of ways. We can represent the number "nine" by:

  • drawing nine tallies on a page
    Image of Tallies
  • using nine pennies
    image of nine pennies
  • using one nickel and four pennies
    image of nickel and 4 pennies
  • writing the decimal numeral "9" in the "ones" digit:

9

  • Accordingly, we represent the decimal number twenty-nine by putting a "9" in the ones digit, and a "2" in the tens digit:

29

Decimal (base-10) numbers are merely a scheme of representation—that is, a way of "writing numbers."

 

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These pages were written by Steven H. VanderLeest and Jeffrey Nyhoff and edited by Nancy Zylstra
©2005 Calvin College, All Rights Reserved

If you encounter technical errors, contact rit@calvin.edu.