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submitted 5 months ago by realitista@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Binary is very good for counting with your fingers. With both hands you can count to 1023. One hand is 31, which is still usually more than you typically need to count. It's also trivial to do once you know how binary works. It takes very little thought, though potentially the decoding could take a bit depending on your proficiency.

[-] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

I made it to 27 on my first attempt, so def messed up somewhere. Also, my fingers don't want to work that way.

Doable.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 months ago

I agree it can feel weird, but first this isn't how we are used to doing it so it hard to compare, and also normally we want our fingers in very precise positions (probably because it's easier to show other people). When doing binary I feel it's easier to ignore precise positions. I just use the half of my finger after the middle knuckle and let my fingers move as they please. We only need to track up or down, so it doesn't need to be precise.

Practice helps. I'm not good at it, but I can manage it fine at this point. For sure it'd doable, but I rarely have to count, and when I do I can generally do it in my head fine. I could see myself using it maybe if tracking a large number over a long time, but I don't see that case ever coming up organically.