this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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There are
10kinds of people in this world. Those who get ternary; those who don't; those who thought this was going to be a binary jokeI might be a slow learner but I'm catching on...
Regardless of what base you're using, 10 is always the nth number. In base 10 (normal numbers), 10 is 10th. In base 2 it is the 2nd.
In base 16 (hexadecimal) it is the 16th.
The original joke is "there are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't l" because 10 in binary is 2 in base 10. But they're pointing out that a similar joke works for all bases of numbers.
I love that you felt like this needed explaining - thanks!
Some of us would argue 10 is the n+1 th number because zero comes first. Otherwise you’re just throwing a new digit into the mix when you get to 10.
Zero comes zeroth.