Q&A for How to Count in Binary

Ten bits. 1000 in binary is: 11 1110 1000 -- log₂(1000)≈9.966 bits. Of course, we can't use 9.966 bits, so we round up to the nearest integer: 10 bits.

In binary notation, in the first column on the right (the "one" column), 0 means zero 1's, and 1 means one 1. In the next column to the left (the "two" column), 0 means zero 2's and 1 means one 2. In the next column (the "four" column), 0 means zero 4's, and 1 means one 4. The same pattern follows in each column. Moving to the left, the columns are "sixteen," "thirty-two," "sixty-four," and so on, each column being worth twice as much as the column to its right. For example, take the base-ten number 61: 61 consists of one 32 plus one 16 plus one 8 plus one 4 plus zero 2's plus one 1. So 61 is notated in binary as 111101 (pronounced "one one one one zero one").

12 consists of one 8 plus one 4 plus zero 2's plus zero 1's, so the binary notation for 12 is 1100.

6 consists of one 4 plus one 2. Therefore, you place a 1 in the four column and a 1 in the two column. So 6 in binary notation is 110.

Nothing of general significance. A zero in any column simply means that that column is adding no value to the number being written.

1 kilobyte is not equal to 1024 bytes, it's equal to 1000 bytes. While some applications (such as the Windows file system) still consider a kilobyte as 1024 bytes for binary calculations, the term kibibyte has been developed to refer to 1024 bytes so as to remove ambiguity.

You can count up to the binary number 1111111111 (ten ones), which is 1,023 in decimal (base-10).

Seeing as eight consists of eight without one, two or four added, it would be 00001000 in binary (the zeros at the start aren't needed, but can make it easier to differentiate between one thousand and binary eight).