The following binary and hexadecimal examples explain how these alternatives to the decimal-based number system function and behave. The base 10 number system. Let's begin to understand binary and ...

But, for medium size numbers, the system switches over to binary. The Mangarevans had special words for 10, 20, 40, and 80 — the first few powers of two, multiplied by ten.

But for numbers 20 through 80, they used a binary system, with separate, one-word terms for 20, 40 and 80. For really large numbers, they used powers of 10 up to at least 10 million.

They find that the former Mangarevans combined base-10 representation with a binary system. They had number words for 1 to 10, and then for 10 multiplied by several powers of 2.