Question

Over Thanksgiving, you decide it will be fun to trick your cousin. You give him some ages in binary, and ask him to figure out how old each person is!

Answer 1

Your question is incomplete since you haven't provided the binary values.

However, I'll show you how to convert a binary number to base 10. Binary is base 2.

The only digits possible in binary are 0 and 1.

An example binary value is 11011

Place those digits as coefficients to the expression shown below

`1*2^4+1*2^3+0*2^2+1*2^1+1*2^0`

The powers of 2 start at 4, and count down to 0. Make sure that this matches with the coefficients from 11011.

From there use a calculator or scratch paper to evaluate that expression and you should get:

`1*2^4+1*2^3+0*2^2+1*2^1+1*2^0\\\\=1*16+1*8+0*4+1*2+1*1\\\\=16+8+0+2+1\\\\=27\\\\`

Therefore the binary value 11011 converts to the base 10 value 27

We can write it like this

`11011_2 = 27_(10)`

The subscripts tell us which base we're working with.

If you need a way to confirm this, then search out "binary to decimal calculator". On a spreadsheet, the function to use is called Bin2Dec which stands for "binary to decimal". Decimal refers to base 10 and not necessarily some fractional value.