Some Blog Site

We were about 5 minutes into a 45-minute van ride with the family, and the 5-year-old wanted to know some math answers.

“What’s 100 plus 100?”
Sometimes we ask him to figure out the answer, sometime we try to explain how it works, but for some reason this time I decided just to answer him.
“200”
“What’s 200 plus 200?”
“400”
“What’s ” (at this point I knew that my training in base-2 numbers would come in handy. As a software engineer, I have 2-to-the-X down pretty well) “400 plus 400?”
“800”

(Condensing the story here. When we made it to 12,800, I decided to call it “128-hundred” for quicker calculation and pronunciation, and I continued that way.)

“What’s 512-hundred plus 512-hundred?”
“1,024-hundred”
“What’s 1…what’s 1 hundred…what’s that number?”
“One thousand twenty four hundred”
“What’s that number plus that number?”
“2,048-hundred”

We continued like that, with his question of “What’s that plus that?” the rest of the way. Then we got to “65536-hundred”. After he asked me what that plus that was for 65535-hundred, I gave up. Mainly because I have 2^X memorized for X from 0 to 16, but this answer was 2¹⁷, so I would have to think about it.

I replied with “I don’t know.”  I expected that he would be disappointed, but he was rather pleased.  “I can count higher than you!” he said, with a grin on his face.

I let him enjoy his victory.