Binary Numbers

by Professor Ima Kook

Itsy dreams her little brother cannot hold up fingers to show his age. She figures out a way for him to show his age by doing things like shutting an eye or opening his mouth. Itsy gives a value, 1, 2, 4, 8, . . . to each sign he can make. She even works out a way to write symbols for each of his signs. After awakening and finding that Bitsy can hold up his fingers, Itsy tells her mother about the new way she invented for Bitsy to show his age. Her mother recognizes what Itsy has done. She has invented binary numbers, the kind of numbers computers use, and also reinvented the way computer scientists write binary numbers as a sequence of 1's and 0's.

28 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2002