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Is quaternary actually useful for anything in the real world? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by spitz@lemmy.ml to c/math@lemmy.ml

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Hello.

I am currently inventing a language, and have created a base 4 number system for it. Unfortunately, I am horrible with numbers, even in decimal. So it was a hard slog. But I finally got there.

It would be great if I could know of any practical applications quaternary has (if any), so I can incorporate it into the language and make it more naturalistic. Thanks.

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[–] octoperson@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Quaternary is a power of 2 base, and so is pretty closely related to binary. Each quaternary digit corresponds to a group of 2 binary bits, so you can easily convert. For example 100011 -> 10,00,11 -> 2,0,3 -> 203. Computer science uses hexadecimal for essentially the same reason (just grouping bits by 4 rather than 2), so people from this culture might be better with computers.

[–] spitz@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hmm. Maybe they were experts at some precursor to quantum physics, and viewed nature itself as 0s and 1s?

That binary conversion made absolutely no sense at all to me, so I'll research it now!

Edit: OK, it's pretty easy once you know how binary progresses. I think this micro-science binary theory might have legs. Thanks for the suggestion!