Thanks! Didn’t even realize 😅

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The bi in binary means 2, so we use two digits which happen to be 0 and 1. (base 2)

A trinary system would be base 3 and yes would be the digits 0-2.

Commonly we use base 10 which is the digits 0-9

If you mean why we use binary and not trinary in computers, it's because a binary bit is easy to represent physically. Either it's on or off, something is there or it isn't, and it's very easy to detect/read by hardware

As you can see I've named that in the OP

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To make it even more confusing for you, affect can also be a noun and effect can also be a verb.

• Somebody can have a strange "affect" e.g. they come across as a strange person.

• You can effect change, as in make change happen.

In the most common use though, effect is a noun and affect is a verb: if something affects you it has a big effect on you.

Rule #4 from the sidebar

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>Explain for laypeople (but not actual 5-year-olds)
>
>Unless OP states otherwise, assume no knowledge beyond a typical secondary education program. Avoid unexplained technical terms. Don't condescend; "like I'm five" is a figure of speech meaning "keep it clear and simple."

I think I explained myself in my post at a level that someone who passed their high school physics class would understand.

You can usa any quantity of characters for a numeral system, binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal are the most common AFAIK but there isn’t any limit to what you can use, if you mean in computers basically because we use “switches” that can be either on or off and 0/1 represent those states

Without that you would never have ADSL or 4G or wifi. Instead of sending 1 bit at the time over the wire, the "bit" can have 64 states, representing 6 bits at a time - a 6-fold increase in bandwidth.

See here for a bit more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-shift_keying#Quadrature_phase-shift_keying_.28QPSK.29

Yes. Why do we use binary though?

You can communicate anything with two answers: Affirmative and Negative. For ease, saying "Yes." and not answering is the same as yes and no. Only being able to say "I am Groot." or nothing is the same. A "statement" and "not-that-statement" being the only two options are fine. Whatever it takes.

Imagine me asking what you want for dinner. Could I get the answer if all you can say is "Yes." Eventually. There are a lot of permutations, but we can go down the list. Or I can be smart, start categorizing the food. Make the algorithm smarter. Cheat. But we still only get one of two options from you. A yes or no.

You can dictate any book to me with those two options. It'll take forever, but it'll get done. English just uses language with a higher base (base ~171,476 in the Oxford dictionary) to save some time, but you can't just translate that to another language 1:1. If you are getting to the base of it all, a binary language, yes or no, is how you make sure everything works at the end of the day.

The simplest computer is a switch of yes, no and we can do anything we want at that level. We've just gotten better about efficiency and cutting corners to make our lives easier with other bases.

no, that's wrong. you're confusing logical circuits with binary arithmetic. there's an algebraic equivalency between them (Boolean algebra) but they aren't the same thing.

binary is a base of number representation. 0 and 1 have the same meaning in this context as they do in any other number representation context.

in computer systems, binary numbers are used to encode all kinds of different information, not only the state of a logical circuit.

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> what you might be thinking of is the way an electronic logic circuit uses electricity

No, what i'm thinking is that this is ELI5, not ELIamanelectricalengineer (:

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Thank you🙏

Happy cake day!

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You can get more storage/bandwidth by just adding more binary bits. To achieve the same result with a ternary system would require way more cost and effort.

That's how additional bases work. You can go above 10 (most commonly base-16) by finding additional symbols too.

If you want to have it be anything more than a mathematical curiosity, you would have to find a practical application for it.

Binary's largest practical application is in digital systems, where every signal can ultimately be broken down into series discrete "on" or "off" switches on a circuit board.

Consider a byte of data. Instead of thinking of it as a number between 0 and 255 (inclusive), think of it as an electrical circuit with eight switches. Each bit desugnates one of those switches as on or off. 00000000 might mean that they are all in the off position, while 11111111 would likewise mean that they are in the on position.

If you were working with a system with three-position switches, a trinary number system like you describe would fit it well, but I don't know of any systems with "off," "on," and "more" as the switch positions.

Binary is unambiguous. Thinking of a physical representation could be a series of valves with fluid flowing through them. 0 = valve shut tight, 1 = valve open. You could make a “computer” with a bunch of valves. But introducing the 2 brings confusion. Assume 1 = valve half open, 2 = fully open. If a valve needed to switch from 0 to 2, there will be a certain amount of time that it is being registered as a “1”. Valves at different parts of a network will have different flow rates, and a fully open valve at point A might have the same flow rate as a half open valve at point B. Meaning the same “valve sensor” could not be used, because if that sensor was programmed to use valve A’s full/half flow rates, putting it at valve B would yield different values than expected.

Theres a lot more factors why trinary isn’t used for computing, but these give you an idea.

You’ve got it about as distilled as it gets, if you’re still having trouble you may want to reinforce your understanding of nouns and verbs (don’t worry it’s complex!)

Clues for “effect”

• may have an article preceding it (the, a)
• may have an adjective describing it (brutal effect)

Clues for “affect”

• may be found between two nouns (I affect you)
• if conjugated with “-ed” or “-ing” you are dealing with affect

Gotchas:

• there is a noun affect and a verb effect but they are not as commonly used as the familiar versions

Computers are made of transitors, which are basically switches controlled by electricity. Transistors are like a tap - they can let electricity through at any amount up to the supply voltage, but it turns out it's easiest for the whole system if we treat each one as either fully open or fully closed. If you look at the tap in your kitchen, you can say confidently if it's running or not, but it's a little harder to say whether it's half on, and you might make a mistake. The whole point of computers is that they don't make mistakes when it comes to math, so more reliable is better. Also you don't save as much as you'd think with a 3-value system over a 2-value system. 2 is the smallest number of values with any practical utility so that's what we use.

I‘m not sure what you mean? The news is what is causing change to her. She is being affected by the news.

that's not true. electricity is a physical phenomenon that has all kinds of continuous quantities associated with it. Amps, Voltage, Resistance, Charge, etc. are all physical quantities associated with electricity that aren't binary at all.

what you might be thinking of is the way an electronic logic circuit uses electricity to determine the logical state of the system. electronic circuits measure voltage potentials on a wire to determine the signal on the wire. The convention is to map a "high" voltage to 1 and a "low" voltage to 0. The exact value of high and low don't matter here, the only thing that's important is that the circuit can reliably measure those values and reliably distinguish the high value from the low value. The wire is capable of having potentials that aren't the values mapped to 1 or 0. In a normal integrated electronic circuit, that would be a kind of error state, but it's still physically possible. It's physically possible because electricity is not inherently "on" or "off".