How to Count to 255 on 8 Fingers

A binary number is a number expressed in the base-2 numeral system, which only uses only two symbols (typically 0 and 1). The base-2 numeral system is a positional notation with a radix of 2. [1, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number]

The "radix", or base, is the number of unique digits, including the digit zero, used to represent numbers. [2, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix]

Each binary digit is referred to as a "bit". [1]

Counting in binary is similar to counting in any other number system. Beginning with a single digit, counting proceeds through each symbol, in increasing order. After a digit reaches 1 in binary, an increment resets it to 0 but also causes an increment of the next digit to the left. [1]

In the binary system, each digit represents an increasing power of 2, with the rightmost digit representing 2^0, the next representing 2^1, then 2^2, and so on. [1]

Binary may be converted to and from hexadecimal easily, because the radix of the hexadecimal system (16) is a power of the radix of the binary system (2). More specifically, 16 = 2^4, so it takes four digits of binary to represent one digit of hexadecimal. [3, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number#Hexadecimal]

A "byte" is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer, and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The modern de facto standard of eight bits per byte allows one byte to store a binary-encoded value between 0 and 255 (2^8 = 256). [4, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte]

In computing, a nibble is four bits, and has sixteen (2^4) possible values. A nibble can be represented by a single hexadecimal digit. A full byte is represented by two hexadecimal digits; therefore, it is common to display a byte of information as two nibbles. [5, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibble]

By using four fingers of two hands, we can represent the two nibbles of a byte with each hand, and count from 0-255!

If we add our thumbs, we can count from 0 through 1023 (2^10 = 1024)

Feel free to leave the audio muted, it can be obnoxious.