Fun with Binary
I had some fun yesterday afternoon with my friends' kids and the under-used system of counting to 31 on one hand using binary. They're some of the coolest kids I know... and not just because they aspire to gain a higher geek quotient by using the Geek Test as a study guide.
It started because my little six-year-old friend asked me if, when counting to six on my hands, I held up my thumb or my index finger to mark the sixth digit (digit here meaning finger or thumb). I of course told him that that's not how I count to six, and showed him how I count in binary... and that what he saw as the number 2 was really the number 6 to me.**
So he went around to other adults and kids for a while with his index and middle finger held up, announcing that he was six. When he wasn't being ignored, a couple geeky friends laughed... though some people didn't get it. I realized that I may have just screwed up this poor kid's ability to succeed in math by learning binary before he knows enough about counting with plain old numbers. I'm sure he's going to show all of his friends and teachers at school today... but then, that's better than my other friend's story about an uncle (I think) trying to teach her that her nose was called "banana."
Okay, so that's the start of yesterday's binary story. With the older, geekier girls (16 and nearly 12), I had fun figuring out what hand gestures were synonymous with certain numbers. For example:
562 = Rock on
28 = OK
19 = I love you (pulling in a little sign language to the mix)
17 = Call me
4, 128, 132 = important numbers to know while driving in Utah
And of course there's "Gimme 31," High 31" or "High 1023!"
**It's important to note that I hold my hands with the palms facing me, thumbs out. You won't get the same results if you start the sequence by counting with your pinkies out. That is the first time I've ever used the word "pinkies" in a written sentence.
