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Dear Mathletes:

Although I could continue with binary lessons for months, I wanted to end the season with an exercise that would teach children a real life skill when there are no computers available. 

Now that the children are experts at converting binary numbers to decimal (binary number 1011 is the decimal number 11) and converting decimal numbers to binary (decimal number 65 is 1000001), they can now learn what computers actually do. That is converting text, numbers, punctuation, and commands to binary. This is a two step process.

Last week, using our knowledge of powers of two, we converted binary numbers using just “1s” and “0s”, into our own decimal base ten numbers. Remember, all data in a computer system consists of binary information. Binary means there are only two possible values: zero and one.

Most of the children have become experts in their powers of two; they came to class with their fists clenched ready to be timed to count from 2^1 = 2 all the way to 2^10 = 1,024 using their fingers. Each finger represents the corresponding power. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024. These numbers should become as comfortable as counting whole numbers from 1-10. I focused on how their time should not be compared with my time or any other mathematician. They should only focus on their last time compared with their current time.