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Octal doesn’t come up as often as binary or hexadecimal in everyday computing, but the conversion between binary and octal uses the exact same grouping trick as binary-to-hex, just with groups of 3 digits instead of 4. Why Groups of 3 Work for Octal Octal uses 8 symbols, 0 through 7, and 8 is exactly … Read more

Subtracting hexadecimal numbers by hand looks unfamiliar at first because of the letters A through F standing in for 10 through 15, but the underlying process is identical to subtracting decimal numbers column by column, borrowing included. Hex Digit Values Worth Knowing First Before subtracting, it helps to have the hex-to-decimal values memorized: A=10, B=11, … Read more

Hexadecimal looks like a completely different number system from binary, but the two are actually closely related — so closely that converting between them doesn’t require any decimal math at all, just a grouping trick. Why Hex and Binary Pair So Naturally Hexadecimal uses 16 symbols (0 through 9, then A through F) instead of … Read more

Binary Coded Decimal, usually shortened to BCD, is a different way of storing numbers in binary — instead of converting a whole number into one long binary value, BCD converts each decimal digit separately, which turns out to be useful in specific, practical situations. How BCD Actually Works In standard binary, the number 47 is … Read more