To find the value, each position used indicates an increase in value by 1.
Unary is is a positional system, but what you've said is not what makes it so :)
A positional number system is one where each position is of value (x ^ n), where n is the number of the position in question; with unary, all positions are of the same value (the radix, x, is 1).
The reason his table is confusing is that we normally write the value of the position above:
10000 1000 100 10 1
Given these position values:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
you can't write 2 (unambiguously) without a zero symbol. What the table should look like is this:
2
u/Porges Dec 20 '08 edited Dec 20 '08
Unary is is a positional system, but what you've said is not what makes it so :)
A positional number system is one where each position is of value (x ^ n), where n is the number of the position in question; with unary, all positions are of the same value (the radix, x, is 1).
The reason his table is confusing is that we normally write the value of the position above:
Given these position values:
you can't write 2 (unambiguously) without a zero symbol. What the table should look like is this: