{"id":2119,"date":"2009-01-31T08:18:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T12:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=2119"},"modified":"2009-01-31T08:18:40","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T12:18:40","slug":"the-other-third-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=2119","title":{"rendered":"The Other Third Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>&#8216;m not sure where this all came from but this week it appears that <em>ternary logic<\/em> is the craze on reddit (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/programming\/comments\/7tqit\/russian_ternary_computer\/\">proof 1<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/programming\/comments\/7trvw\/three_cheers_for_base_3_a_quick_introduction_to\/\">proof 2<\/a>). The first link goes to a short Wikipedia article about the Russian&#8217;s (successful) attempts to build a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Setun\">ternary computer<\/a> (as opposed to the binary-based computer you&#8217;re reading this on). The other one goes to a scientific article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanscientist.org\/issues\/id.3268,y.2001,no.6,content.true,page.1,css.print\/issue.aspx\">in praise of the ternary system<\/a>, which points out the drawbacks of the binary computing. To sum it up:\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">The cultural preference for base 10 and the engineering advantages of base 2 have nothing to do with any intrinsic properties of the decimal and binary numbering systems. Base 3, on the other hand, does have a genuine mathematical distinction in its favor. By one plausible measure, it is the most efficient of all integer bases; it offers the most economical way of representing numbers.\n<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re all for doing math during the weekend, an excellent article can be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.burtonmackenzie.com\/2007\/12\/whats-most-optimal-numeric-base.html\">found right here<\/a..\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8216;m not sure where this all came from but this week it appears that ternary logic is the craze on reddit (proof 1 and proof 2). The first link goes to a short Wikipedia article about the Russian&#8217;s (successful) attempts &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=2119\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[204,366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}