this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I'm in my mid 40s, and I've never thought to count in binary on my fingers. I haven't needed to use binary for about 30 years, and I'm easily the geekiest of my friends, so I've never had an excuse to do it for fun.
You've just put a huge smile on my face.
Guess what I'm teaching my kid this week ๐
Most of the time it's not exactly useful and some of the positions are awkward (e.g. 8, 9, 10), counting to 31 on one hand is maybe useful.
More useful IMO is counting in base 6 and treating each hand as a single digit. i.e counting to 35 on 2 hands without awkward fingerings. Better than 10, less awkward than binary.
It does take s little practice but not too much. The awkward positions are easy enough after a few weeks.
I chose binary for two reasons. First, it is occasionally useful to count that high on one hand. Second, the education when he's older. I hope this will give him a note intuitive understanding of different bases. And binary is specifically useful for understanding comported and software development. I dont intend to push him toward a career in software but I think there's a fair chance he chooses that anyways.
Plus we've made it into something fun ๐
We're about to start learning how to program, probably with Python, so it could be a good way to start thinking about how computers work. I never would have thought to try other systems though, so I'll look into base 6. Thanks for the suggestion :)
Oh, the fun I would have had with that phrasing if we weren't talking about teaching kids... :D