| Electronics > Beginners |
| Why binary is represented by two bits 0 and 1 and not three bits? |
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| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: Canis Dirus Leidy on October 27, 2019, 09:02:49 am --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on October 27, 2019, 08:52:49 am ---Analogue computers work by solving differential equations. Electronic analogue computers use opamps to integrate, add, and multiply. Mechanical analogue computers use cogs, wheels, motors, wires. --- End quote --- And real programmers use water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_integrator :) --- End quote --- And real electronic engineers use gas for their logic circuits: https://www.symscape.com/blog/fluidic-logic I once had a job assessing whether to replace fluidic logic with a microprocessor; I recommended against it. The logic was on unmanned offshore oil rigs with zero electricity for safety reasons. Adding electricity was possible but had no advantages and many disadvantages. |
| tooki:
I think the take-home message here is that often, when people ask "why is x always done like this?" or "why don't we do x [some unusual way]?", they are blithely unaware that all the other ways typically have been tried before, and the reason x became the dominant way is because it has clear advantages. Ideas aren't nearly as unique and special as people think they are. It's implementations that are difficult! |
| konzill:
Looking at the Wikipedia page on trinary logic, it turns out that there isn't even a consensus on how to build a trinary truth table. The page lists half a dozen different trinary logic systems. So yes it goes back to, its rarely done because it adds complexity. Even at a basic level having to differentiate three voltage levels, instead of two would make a circuit more suceptable to noise. |
| Syntax Error:
@tip.can19 - Binary and it's associated Boolean logic also fits our statefull view of the world; states such as yes-no, up-down, on-off, in-out, high-low, push-pull, mark-space, set-reset, left-right, true-false. Alternate states like whatever, dunno and Brexit, don't work when making decisions as they are not finite states. Being caught between finite states is being in the noise. A transition between two finite states is the hysteresis. In digital, this is the rate of change of voltage to what is regarded as a stable logic 0 or 1. Real-world, this might involve the thinking time about which shirt to wear on a date; the flowery one or the clean one? Geek out on Boolean algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra Geek out on Hysteresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis Geek out on the Finite State Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine P.S. Thinking about this, in data analysis, it is possible for an outcome to have three states; an outcome can be none, one or many. I believe this none/one/many concept was created by Australian Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago. Clever dudes. |
| Vtile:
Why binary not ternary.. I suppose one interesting reason is that all widely used number systems are even based, 2,8,10,16,60. |
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