What is a real world use for number base 16?

Answer 1

It is most definitely used in electronics and computer science. In both, it is convenient that base 16 is a multiple of binary, and is a much more compact way of working with binary-type situations. The reason for this is that each 4 binary bits maps to a single hex digit (hex is shorthand for hexidecimal, which is the name of the base 16 numbering system). For example, the number 255 in binary is

01111111,

awkward for such a small number. But the same number in hex is

FF,

and you can easily go back and forth between hex and binary once you've memorized the following (BIN is the binary column, HEX is the corresponding hexideciaml valu, and DEC is the regular old decimal equivalent):

BIN . HEX . DEC
0000 = 0 = 0
0001 = 1 = 1
0010 = 2 = 2
0011 = 3 = 3
0100 = 4 = 4
0101 = 5 = 5
0110 = 6 = 6
0111 = 7 = 7
1000 = 8 = 8
1001 = 9 = 9
1010 = A = 10
1011 = B = 11
1100 = C = 12
1101 = D = 13
1110 = E = 14
1111 = F = 15

So since 16 is a power of 2, hex maps nicely into binary and vica-versa. For example, the binary number

1001 0101 0001 0010, is unfathomable, but in hex is
. 9 . . . .5 . . .1 . . . .2, or just 9512.

Notice that all I did was group the binary digits into groups of 4, then replaced each group of 4 with the single hex digit equivalent.

It looks ridiculous to the uninitiated, and may not make much sense to you right now, but if you had to design or troubleshoot digital circuits or write a computer program, you would find very quickly just how useful hex is.

.

Answer 2

Base 16

Answer 3

Since 16 is a power of two, it's a useful shorthand for representing numbers the way decimal computers handle them - in binary, or base two.
So, 10 in decimal is A in hexidecimal, 12 in octal (base 8), and 1010 in binary. In hexidecimal each digit represents 4 binary digits, 0000 through 1111 or 0 through F. In octal each digit represents 3 binary digits, 000 through 111 or 0 through 7.

Answer 4

It's useful for displaying large numbers using fewer digits. For example, the web page you're looking at right now has the colors coded as hexidecial numbers. Colors for web pages are in the format of XXXXXX, where each set of 2 digits tells you how much of each of the 3 primary colors to use. It uses 0 through 9 then the letters A through F as the digits. Normally in our decimal system, you can only show 100 different values wtih two digits (00 through 99). But with a base-16 system you can show 16*16 = 256 different numbers by using two digits.

Answer 5

use of base 16
I don't know if you understand the ascii code in computer programmming
ascii number of A is 65. . . in base 2 is 100001. . base 16 is 41 . . .. = 4(16) + 1
ascii number of B is 66. . . in base 2 is 100010. . base 16 is 42. . .. = 4(16) + 2
ascii number of C is 67. . . in base 2 is 100011. . base 16 is 43. . .. = 4(16) + 3
ascii number of A is 68. . . in base 2 is 100101. . base 16 is 44. . .. = 4(16) + 4
etc
electricity is just on and off . . .. this the use of base 2
lights are either on of off

base 16 simplified this symbol . . . A is just 41

all letters that you type in computer is interpreted as hex values or numbers

long time ago letters are interpreted as on or off using 0 or 1 or base 2

Answer 6

Computers. The hexidecimal memory storage system is base 16.

Answer 7

It's widely used in low-level computing - since computers operate in binary, which is pretty unwieldy, we group three or four bits together for human use and show it in octal (base 8) or hexadecimal (base 16). Using hexadecimal you can represent one byte (8 bits) in two hex digits. You can see hex displays in debugging applications, HTML character codes and colour codes, application error reports, in your system registry, etc.

For an alternative application, it is more efficient to calculate the digits of π in hex (or in binary) than in decimal. See the Wikipedia article listed below for details.

Answer 8

hexidemical/binary