Re: Do pun explanations lose humor?

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

>  John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG> wrote:
> > Octal numbers are in base 8 hence 31 octal =  3x8 + 1 = 25 decimal.
> They are commonly used in computer publications, but hex (hexadecimal,
> base 16) has gained in popularity.
> > Puns explained lose their humor.
> >
> > John M. Clement,  Houston, TX
>
> *** Thanks for the explanation. But is there much
> humor in statements that no one can understand?
> ...or am I the only one who had this difficulty?

Well it is an in joke.  After all to understand it one usually has to be
educated in some of the more arcane aspects of computers.  Number bases is
often not taught in math and even when this is done, octal may not be
mentioned by name.  Even in computer science it is dying with the advent of
all computers being oriented around bytes (8 bits).  When there were
computers with a multiple of 3 bits it made a lot of sense to express binary
numbers as octal, but now hex is the preferred notation.

Octal however has great pedagogical usefulness as a way station for
understanding binary.  You can introduce octal notation, and students can
begin to understand it because of its similarity to decimal.  Then the leap
to binary is much easier.  Finally hex can be introduced if needed.

Some more arcane terminology is 1/2 byte is often called a nibble or there
are 4 bits to a nibble and 8 bits to a byte.  Oh yes and the SI prefix kilo
means 1000 but IEC has coined a new set of prefixes which as I recall are
kibi = 2^10 or 1024 ...  see
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

So kB is 1000 bytes, but kiB is 1024 bytes, in line with common terminology
in the computer world.

Oh yes there is the old joke about a cm crawling across a table, but when
you squash it you get an erg.  (dyne-cm!).  It is an ancient physics in joke
which shows your age.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX