Learn How to Read Binary in 5 minutes

3. Because it?s a base 2 system, each digit is 2 to the power of (n). (n) refers to the placement of the number.

4. A binary number is pretty much telling us whether or not we are using that value

5. The 1 value tells us we are using that value (represented by green checkmarks) & the 0 value tell us we are not using that value (represented by red X?s).

6. The first digit in this example is representing that the value 2 to the power of 0 is ON

7. The second digit (2 to the power of 1) is OFF so the value is 0.

Let?s represent those 2 values in our drawing..

Let?s calculate the rest of the values & add the ones that are ON together?

What we just did can be represented in the following equation:

If Binary is just a counting system, what do people mean when they want to write something in Binary?

  • What they mean is how to spell things with ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
  • ASCII is a way to convert a computer?s data (which can only be in numbers) & turn it in to letters.
  • ASCII chart assigns a character to each value represented by a byte (8 bits/digits) of binary.

Let?s take a look at our previous example..

  • This example represents an Uppercase Y
  • Since 8 digits of binary can represent up to 255 values, the ASCII chart has 255 letters & symbols to choose from.

Since we already looked at the breakdown for some of these binary letters, we only have one 8 digit binary letter left ? the third one, which comes out to a lowercase l.

If you read the word it spells out?

?Yolo?

Hope this helped you learn how to read binary 🙂 Happy Coding!