BINARY up close and personal

In the model “The Genetics of Alphabet Soup”, we built a sentence, then we copied and edited it. As we sorted through the letters for “A cat”, we had to compare a letter swirling around in a bowl against another we were searching for. That ‘template’ made it easy for us to sort, because it set out the parameters we were looking for. That way, when we saw a new letter, we’d only ask ourselves “Is this a ‘T’ ?” If the answer was yes, we instantly knew what to do. A simple answer for a simple question – that’s the effect of binary.

So, binary works in this wonderful way that allows a single long number to represent a bunch of decisions. It’s like a check-list.

What did you do today ? Yes /No Value

Did you turn off the alarm clock ? Y 1

Did you get up ? N 0

Did you call in “sick” to work ? Y 1

Did you go golfing ? Y 1

Did you go back to bed ? Y 1

Were you fired for calling in sick ? N 0

Were you fired for going golfing ? N 0

Were you fired for incompetency ? Y 1

The resulting number has a binary value of 10111001, and represents all of the answers you provided in the checklist. This is raw data with a numeric value. Each digit in that number has an exclusive meaning. Not a good thing for using as a number for the purposes of calculation, but perfect for comparison. You see, I don’t golf.

Since I don’t golf, my number turns out a bit different…

You, a golfer 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1

Me, a non-golfer 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

Compared, if “1” means “same” 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

Just like the Alphabet Soup model, it becomes very easy to know what doesn’t match. We need to examine the prospects of this principle a bit closer still. Down to the Nanosemaphore level we go…

Next Floor: Nanosemaphore

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