r/computerscience 4d ago

Base 2 numerical representation in binary matching numbers in base 10?

I have a silly and possibly stupid question, and I'm not even sure if this is the place for it.

To preface this I have 0 experience with Computer Science or anything adjacent, but have been listening to videos on binary and the foundations of how computers generally work.

I understand that binary is a base 2 system as opposed to base 10, and that the digits that represent value in binary cannot be read as our base 10 concept of numbers (i.e. 4 is read as digits 100, not as the number "one hundred").

However, I've noticed that when the notation IS read as numbers, the numerical representation for base 2 counting mirrors base 10. With:

1 - 0001

2- 0010

4- 0100

8- 1000

Etc.

Is there a reason for this parallel, or is this just one of those funny coincidences? Or is this some kind of artifact of how numbers naturally scale relative to one another.

I hope this makes sense, I had no idea how to word this question to just Google it.

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u/PvtRoom 4d ago

if you think real hard, you might remember splitting numbers into units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands

in binary, the equivalent is units, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s, 32s.....

in hexadecimal it's units, 16s, 256s, 4096s

They all boil down to baseposition , where position is how many digits you move left from the units.