Memory/Storage - who do you believe?

[Frances144]

Utility says one thing
Whatsize says another
and About this Mac (storage) another.

Who do you believe?  Which one tells the truth - she says standing at a forked path......

[Xairbusdriver]

Depends on what units you use: Human Decimal (base 10) or Binary (base 2)? Some apps allow you to choose. For example, "one thousand" is written as 1,000 in base 10 but 1,024 in base 2. Humans and horses that count usually use base 10; ten fingers (not sure what horses use). But computers are binary machines. A bit can only be ON or OFF, 1 or zero.

The problem gets even worse when you start making abbreviations: "k" is usually short hand for "thousand". So, is "1k" equal to 1,000 or 1,024? Obviously the difference gets worse the higher you go: a "million" becomes "m" or "M". But is that 1,000,000 or 1,048,576. Where did those extra 48,576 bits go in "1MB"?! Of course, in a computer, that number looks like 11110100001001000000 (per this site).

Computer Hope is one of the easiest sites I've come across to explain the way a computer stores numbers and how they may be reported to mere humans.

"Whenever you find a fork in the road...

pick it up."

[Frances144]

How about Plain English.

I understand that!

 

[Xairbusdriver]

If you grew up using English Pounds, computer storage numbers should be a piece of cake!

How about Plain English.
I understand that!

As HAL once said,

Sorry, Dave. I can't help you with that.

And don't get me started on the British spelling of 'meraken words!

[Frances144]

Best day ever in Primary School (5-11) when we went decimal.  Life became less complicated.

[Xairbusdriver]

However, you may remember that this side of the Pond still has a large group of holdouts in the move to decimalization...

Give me Liberty and inches!

[kimmer]

Who do you believe?  Which one tells the truth - she says standing at a forked path......

Me, I'd go with About this Mac (storage).

[Xairbusdriver]

The point is, they are both saying the same thing. One just uses a different counting base, base 10 or base 2. There is also hexadecimal. Of course, for really large numbers, there is the exponential method, converting a number to a "power of". No body is lying about the numbers, you just have to know (or read the manual) to determine what method they are using.

[Highmac]

When my son was at school, I took advantage of his teacher's evening to ask about the 'base' numbers which I'd never got my head round. He asked me if I could still calculate 'old' money. There was no problem and he said: "well, 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings in the pound... base 12 and base 20." So simple when he described it that way. And I can still do those calculations in my head - not that it's a lot of use these days.

The UK went over to decimal money in 1971... we buy our  petrol by the litre, but always talk about how many miles we get to the gallon.  Our Fiesta has averaged 44mpg in the four-and-a-bit years since we bought it.


(What happened to our 'Off Topic' smiley?) :

[Xairbusdriver]

You mean this one? 

If you can remember 12 in a schilling and 20 of those in a pound, surely you can remember to use the [more] link at the end/bottom of the visible smilies list. Click that and you'll get a small window with ~98 additional smilies.

Of course, the "Off Topic" smiley is particularly difficult to remember since one has to use a lower-case "O" and "T" plus leave out the space between the words, not to mention adding the colon ":" at both endz... 

As for the base 10/2/8/16, these storage number displays are really no different than temperature reports:
Which is the fake number? 75°F, 23.9°C, 297.039°K or 534.67°R
Or Cat age to Human age: 11yr, 5mo = 61yr, 7mo

Bonus question for our British drivers:
Why are UK mpg numbers different than US mpg?
According to Omni Calculator, 41 US mpg is the same as 49.239 UK mpg or 17.43 kmpl (kilometers per liter).