Number Bases View more

Master the fundamentals for working in decimal, binary, hexadecimal, and other bases.

Book 29 Lessons

Course description

It's a traditional choice to use base ten by default. You see the numerical digits 0-9 every day and you probably find it most natural to use base 10, even if you already know about binary and hexadecimal. However, many concepts in math and applications in computer science are more simply and elegantly expressed in non-decimal bases.

This course introduces a variety of powerful tools for problem-solving that take advantage of knowing and controlling what number base you're working in. You'll learn techniques for doing math in many different bases and explore applications to computer science, magic card tricks, and advanced, abstract math.

Topics covered

  • Binary
  • Change of Base
  • Digital Roots
  • Divisibility
  • Hexadecimal
  • Last Digits
  • Perfect Shuffling
  • Repeating Decimals
  • Repunits
  • Terminating Decimals

Prerequisites and next steps

This course assumes prerequisite familiarity with algebra at the level of the Algebra Fundamentals course. Modular arithmetic (which is covered in "Number Theory") also makes an appearance, but is only needed in the last chapter of this course.

Prerequisites