Yorkville High School Computer Science

AP Computer Science :: Lessons :: Number Base Conversions

Binary Numbers

Normally, we represent numbers in decimal notation, also known as base 10. Decimal notation uses 10 digits (0-9) to represent numbers. We use this notation because it matches the number of fingers we have on our hands. Binary notation, or base 2, uses 2 digits (0-1) and is used by computers because of the on/off nature of an electric current. Below are the first 32 numbers (0-31) displayed as decimal and binary. You may sometimes find it easier to display leading 0s when using binary so the numbers below are displayed with leading 0s. Those leading 0s are not necessary so feel free to leave them off if you can understand the numbers without them.

Decimal	Binary
0	00000
1	00001
2	00010
3	00011
4	00100
5	00101
6	00110
7	00111
8	01000
9	01001
10	01010
11	01011
12	01100
13	01101
14	01110
15	01111
16	10000
17	10001
18	10010
19	10011
20	10100
21	10101
22	10110
23	10111
24	11000
25	11001
26	11010
27	11011
28	11100
29	11101
30	11110
31	11111

Octal Numbers

Octal notation, or base 8, uses 8 digits (0-7) and is occasionally used in computers. Unix file permissions use Octal, and it used to be helpful on older computer systems that used 24- or 32-bit words. Octal could be used as a binary abbreviation on these computers because an octal digit could cover exactly three binary digits since 0 through 7 covers 000 through 111 in binary. Modern computers, however, use 16-, 32-, or 64-bit words, which are then divided into 8-bit bytes. Three octal digits would be required for every byte, but the third octal digits would only cover 2 binary digits, which wastes space. This is the main reason why octal has fallen in use. Below is a table showing decimal, binary, and octal numbers 0 through 31.

Decimal	Binary	Octal
0	00000	00
1	00001	01
2	00010	02
3	00011	03
4	00100	04
5	00101	05
6	00110	06
7	00111	07
8	01000	10
9	01001	11
10	01010	12
11	01011	13
12	01100	14
13	01101	15
14	01110	16
15	01111	17
16	10000	20
17	10001	21
18	10010	22
19	10011	23
20	10100	24
21	10101	25
22	10110	26
23	10111	27
24	11000	30
25	11001	31
26	11010	32
27	11011	33
28	11100	34
29	11101	35
30	11110	36
31	11111	37

Hexadecimal Numbers

Hexadecimal notation, or base 16, uses 16 digits to represent numbers. Since we only have 10 numbers (0-9) the letters A-F are used to represent 10 through 15. Each hexadecimal digit can represent 4 binary digits (also known as a nibble) so it is much better than octal at shortening binary. You will find hexadecimal numbers used to represent colors in image-editing programs or on the web and you will also find them used in almost any programming language to some degree, especially for assembly languages. This final table shows all four number bases including hexadecimal.

Decimal	Binary	Octal	Hexadecimal
0	00000	00	00
1	00001	01	01
2	00010	02	02
3	00011	03	03
4	00100	04	04
5	00101	05	05
6	00110	06	06
7	00111	07	07
8	01000	10	08
9	01001	11	09
10	01010	12	0A
11	01011	13	0B
12	01100	14	0C
13	01101	15	0D
14	01110	16	0E
15	01111	17	0F
16	10000	20	10
17	10001	21	11
18	10010	22	12
19	10011	23	13
20	10100	24	14
21	10101	25	15
22	10110	26	16
23	10111	27	17
24	11000	30	18
25	11001	31	19
26	11010	32	1A
27	11011	33	1B
28	11100	34	1C
29	11101	35	1D
30	11110	36	1E
31	11111	37	1F

Base Conversion To Decimal

Converting from binary to decimal is fairly easy. It makes more sense, though, when you realize what numbers actually stand for. Take the decimal number 4302. That number means there are 4 thousands, 3 hundreds, 0 tens, and 2 ones in the number. You could express it like this:

(4 * 1000) + (3 * 100) + (0 * 10) + (2 * 1)

or

(4 * 103) + (3 * 102) + (0 * 101) + (2 * 100)

Either one of the above formulas will equal 4302, but the second is a little easier to write because we are using exponential notation. Also, you may have realized that it can be difficult to tell what number base a number is in just by looking at it. For example, 4302 could be decimal, octal, or hexadecimal. For this reason numbers will have a subscript after them specifying the base if the base is not obvious. If there is no subscript you can assume decimal notation. So the number 4302 would be shown as 4302_DEC or just 4302 to indicate it is in base 10.

Converting from binary to decimal uses this same principle. Let's try converting 100101_BIN to decimal. The difference compared to what we did in base 10 was we will be using a 2 instead of a 10 in exponential notation.

(1 * 25) + (1 * 22) + (1 * 20)
= 32 + 4 + 1
= 37

Notice that we did not include any of the bits that were equal to 0 since they would evaluate to 0 anyway. If this is confusing for you then simply include them in the formula.

Converting from octal to decimal works the same way. Let's convert 230_OCT to decimal.

(2 * 82) + (3 * 81)
= (2 * 64) + (3 * 8)
= 128 + 24
= 152

When using a base other than binary you need to remember to multiply the number in front of the exponent to get the correct result. Finally, let's convert a number in hexadecimal format to decimal. We will convert 2C03_HEX to decimal.

(2 * 163) + (12 * 162) + (3 * 160)
= (2 * 4096) + (12 * 256) + (3 * 1)
= 8192 + 3072 + 3
= 11267

The key difference with hexadecimal conversion is you need to remember what the letters stand for. C stands for 12, in this case, so we substituted 12 in the formula.

Base Conversion From Decimal

Converting to another base from decimal is a little trickier than what we just accomplished, but if you're a fan of long division you'll feel right at home. To convert decimal to any other base you simply need to divide the decimal number by the new base number. The remainder each time will be the digits of the new number from right to left. You keep dividing until there is nothing left. Let's see any example by converting 71 to binary. Start at the bottom of the divisions below and move up.

     0 R 1

2)  1 R 0

2)  2 R 0

2)  4 R 0

2)  8 R 1

2)17 R 1

2)35 R 1

2)71

The answer to the above problem would be 1000111_BIN. You can check your answer by converting back to decimal if you need to.

We won't do an octal conversion since that will be exactly the same as the above except you would substitute an 8 for the 2, but let's try to convert 8435 to hexadecimal.

           0 R 2

16)      2 R 0

16)    32 R 15

16)  527 R 3

16)8435

The answer to the above problem would be 20F3HEX since 15 equals F in hexadecimal. For practice converting between different number bases you can pick any number and use the number base converter at Cut The Knot to check your answer.