Binary Math Lessons: The Secret Origin

Unschooling? How did my last post have anything to do with unschooling? As soon as I saw the title on the screen, I cringed. The benefits of binary math, check, anything to do with unschooling? Nada.

As it turns out, I’d started in the middle of the story. Our six year-old, No. 1, and I started heading towards binary math—in more proper unschooling form—because she wandered into the room one day and said, “Dad, I want to learn what you do at work.”

All I do at work is test machines whose sole job it is to move ones and zeroes around: microprocessors and other digital devices also known as computer chips in the vernacular. So, since one and zero are pretty simple concepts, and as it turns out, the logic gate building blocks of digital devices are also really simple, off we went!

The first thing we need to nail down were the handful of logic gates I encounter. What’s a logic gate you ask? It’s just an electrical embodiment of a logical construct, (you know like the one’s you had in philosophy 101). Take the ‘and’ gate we started out with for example. The device takes two inputs that can be either a one or a zero, and outputs a single number in return, again either one or zero. If both the inputs are 1, (known as logical true in the vernacular), then the device outputs a one, if not, then the device outputs a 0,(a logical false value). Hence, if one output AND the other are both true, the ‘and’ gate gives a true output aka 1. Otherwise its output is 0, aka false .

No. 1 and I made up some homework sheets for her to play around with. Her homework was to fill in the logic gates on the page with any sets of inputs and outputs from the table.

Did I mention we talk about this stuff all the time too?
"Hey, what's 1 AND 1?"
"1"
"What's 1 AND 0?"
"0 Dad," and so on.

I personally think our constant conversations drive things home more than the homework, but who knows? In any event, there are a lot of MUNI riders who know more about logic gates than they used to or maybe wanted to.

In case you wanted to play along:

Homework pages as pdf

And as a picture:

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