Why your 32nd birthday is a momentous ordeal

Turning 32 may not seem like a very exciting birthday, but it is! In fact, it is the most momentous birthday of all, because it’s the first time in your life that you can’t show your age on a single hand.

Counting in binary.

First, a refresher. Binary, (popularly known as the number system of computers which think in terms of ons and offs, as represented by ones and zeros) is base-2, whereas good old decimal is base-10.

This means that in the decimal system, we have:

One	0001	10⁰
Ten	0010	10¹
One hundred	0100	10²
One thousand	1000	10³

Whereas in the binary system, we have:

One	0001	2⁰
Two	0010	2¹
Four	0100	2²
Eight	1000	2³

In decimal, there are 10 characters: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9. We can easily count to ten on our fingers with each finger representing the next character. But you can’t reach any number higher than ten. In binary, each finger contains all possibilities of each character (0 or 1, up or down) so you can have each finger represent the next power of two instead of the other characters. In effect, with ten fingers, you an represent all numbers up to 2¹⁰-1 = 1023, a huge improvement!

Hold your closed fists in front of you, nails facing you. You can think of ten bits, like this:

Lift your right thumb and you have the number 2⁰=1:

Lift just your right index-finger. Now you have 2¹ = 2

How about the number ten? That’s 2³ + 2¹ = 8 + 2 = 10, so you say:

which is kind of a funny bunny hand signal.

What about the universal rock hand-symbol?

That’s 16 + 2 = 18

Middle finger?

That’s four.

Middle finger with thumb out?

is five. So next time your five year old gives you the finger, and says, “I’m this many!” you know he or she is counting in a powerful numbering system. Congratulations!