Working through Block 1 Part 2 Session 6 triggered a memory from school from when I was 10 or so, when my parents wrote a letter to the teacher to say that “Emma has not quite grasped the concept of base six numerals”. Indeed I hadn't, and I'm not sure I ever did - I think possibly we just moved on to a different topic.
It did make me wonder what bases other than base 10 are used for. Block 1 explains that binary numbers are used in computing, so OK, I get that. Session 6 notes that base 16 (hexadecimal) is useful in some branches of computing. But what about other bases, such as base eight or indeed my old nemesis, base six?
I briefly Googled the base six numeral system. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senary it’s also known as ‘senary’. Interesting section on languages believed to use senary numerals.
I worked through the various conversion activities in Session 6 but I can’t say this stuff is intuitive. Especially converting from decimal to binary – what a faff. Nightmare keeping track of the columns and the 1s and 0s. The Sense activity (Activity 39) was quite fun though.
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| Image of Sense interface showing activity 39b |
Charmed to learn that a set of four bits – half a byte – is called a ‘nibble’. Apparently the term is rarely used …
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