How to Count in Binary ( or Count to 1023 on Your Fingers and Hands )

Counting to 10 is so 3rd grade. Learn to count to 1023 on your fingers and hands, if you take off your shoes and break out your toes you can count to a few million. This is a prequel to how parity bits work in RAID systems.

Binary uses 2 digits, 0 and 1. It is used in computers because electricity is easy to manipulate to be On (1) or Off (0).

You can represent 0 by not extending a finger, and 1 by extending it. This is the basics of counting in binary.

0 will be no fingers extended.
When you extend a finger that is 1.
When you extend a second finger, bring the first finger back down, this is 2.

Extend a second finger to make 3.
Retract the 2 extended fingers and extend your middle finger to make 4.

Continue until you run out of fingers.