There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who get ternary; those who don’t; those who thought this was going to be a binary joke

stebo
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1222d

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who get quaternary; those who don’t; those who thought this was going to be a ternary joke; those who can see where this is going…

I might be a slow learner but I’m catching on…

stebo
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322d

ah I see, you are the 10th kind!

JackbyDev
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522d

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.

  1. 1
  2. 10
  3. 11

In base 16 (hexadecimal) it is the 16th.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. A
  11. B
  12. C
  13. D
  14. E
  15. F
  16. 10

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.

JackbyDev
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120d

Zero comes zeroth.

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