| Denary Numbers | |
We use numbers all of the time and are very used to them in our everyday lives. The numbers we are used to are in what is known as denary notation. Every part of a number goes from 0 to 9, so there is only ten possible values for each part of a denary number. Look at the number 342
100's |
10's |
1's |
3 |
4 |
2 |
The digit 3 is in the 100's column, 4 in the 10's and finally 2 in the 1's. To get the final number we could rewrite it as -
(3 x 100) + (4 x 10) + (2 x 1) = 342
or even (Note - any number to the power zero is always 1. This is just a mathematical definition.)
(3 x 10^2) + (4 x 10^1) + (2 x 10^0) = 342
Denary notation is base 10 as the base of our powers is always 10. If we looked at the number 49,301 we would get the equation.
(4 x 10^4) + (9 x 10^3) + (3 x 10^2) + (0 x 10^1) + (1 x 10^0) = 342
Column No |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
|
4 |
9 |
3 |
0 |
1 |
The column number is the power we must raise the base in order to find the magnitude of that column. For column 3 we would raise the base of 10 by 3 then multiply it by the number 9, which is the value inside that column. This is how the above equation gets constructed. This notation may not seem useful now, but when we start looking at binary numbers it is critical.
