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Still using your phone to tot up numbers? Learn how to <a style="text-shadow: none;" href="https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-01/05/london-zoo%27s-annual-animal-stocktake?page=all"> count on your fingers</a> in binary. Manfred Moormann, a business developer at Telekom Austria, explains how to do it.
\1. Each finger represents one digit of a binary number.
\2. Start with your palms facing towards you. Your right thumb is the first digit and gets the value 20=1. Your index finger has the value 21=2, your middle finger 22=4 and so on, each successive digit representing an increase in the power of 2. So from your right hand to your left hand, the values of your fingers are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512.
\3. A raised finger represents a 1 and a lowered finger a 0. These ones and zeros work like switches -- they turn on and off the value of the digits.
\4. To count 1, extend your right thumb and lower all your other fingers -- so only the value of one is turned on. To count 2, raise your index finger. Be careful who you point the number 4 at.
\5. To count numbers that are not 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 on one hand, use fingers in combination. So to count 3, extend both your thumb and your index. To count 6, flick someone a V-sign. A hang-loose (thumb and little finger extended) is 17.
This means that on one hand you can count up to 31; with both hands combined, 1,023 (1+2+4+8+16+32+ 64+128+256+512).
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
