The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison, with ...

Binary, or base two, is the number system that computer systems use, as opposed to the decimal, or base ten, system used in our day-to-day lives. Binary is generally associated with high technology ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. They find that the former Mangarevans combined base-10 ...

The natives of a remote Polynesian Island invented a binary number system, similar to the one used by computers to calculate, centuries before Western mathematicians did, new research suggests. The ...

While Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s work has influenced centuries of technological innovation, his own influences included Chinese philosophy and divination manuals recorded as early as 1000 BC. On ...

The natives of a remote Polynesian Island invented a binary number system, similar to the one used by computers to calculate, centuries before Western mathematicians did, new research suggests. The ...