Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 465.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-04-14 09:52:46+00:00
        From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.461: octal or hexadecimal

Greetings.

In Humanist 38.457, Gabriel Egan wrote:

> One thing I cannot settle on is whether,
> as a shorthand for expressing binary numbers,
> students should learn octal or hexadecimal.

I am not (employed as) a humanist, but...

Like Willard, I would say hex, definitely, but for the slightly different reason
that hex simply 'rhymes' better with the bytes that they'll presumably be using.

Now that, post-70s, the world has settled on 8-bit bytes, it's tidy that any
byte is representable with two 4-bit hex digits, as opposed to the 3+3+2 of two-
and-a-spare octal ones, like a stuttering rhythm.  A four-byte integer is
straightforwardly twice-4 hex digits long, rather than 4 times 8 divided by 3
octal ones.

On the rare occasions I'd see octal digits now, they have an air of... I can't
put my finger on it: something exotic but unglamorous.

Gabriel, you also say:

> For my students, [...] the octal
> system has the benefit of their needing to
> memorize only 8 patterns (000b to 111b) instead
> of 16 (0000b to 1111b).

In this context of a cross-campus course, it jumped out at me that you say
'memorize'.

I wouldn't have thought to teach it that way, on my side of the campus, but
then, I ask students to memorise almost nothing.  If I were introducing binary
numbers, I'd say that 1001b was eightandoneisnine, and so on, with the
expectation that that sum would get faster and faster with familiarity, to the
point where a few salient numbers would be internalised directly.  This is not,
of course, to disagree with you, but to reflect that it might illustrate what
might be a difference in style across campus, with humanists (trained to be)
comfortable remembering lots of material, in volumes that my students might (be
trained to) find oppressive.

Best wishes,

Norman


--
Norman Gray  |  https://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/
Lecturer  –  School of Physics and Astronomy
& Principal Engineer, Educational Technology  –  College of Science and
Engineering
University of Glasgow, UK


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php