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Friday, August 28, 2026
In my courses, we just refer to them as trinary units
I also would not call them trits
bits makes sense to shorten because it both sounds good, and also that is the most common unit you would use (second most common being natural units or nats)
at higher levels of abstraction, we're really good at modulation, look at some of the absurd WiFi7 QAM standards
I think there is probably some niche region, where a trinary microcontroller could more efficiently perform
Replying to Phijkchu_Pikachu #klombak bits makes sense to shorten because it both sounds good, and also that is the most common unit you would use (second most common being natural units or nats)
it also sounds good because it has real world application and understanding
I do not believe that is a good reason, since if we were int he weird trinary computing world where that was more useful, trits would still sound weird
bit is just a shortening of binary unit, same as trit, but trit just sounds weird
Replying to Phijkchu_Pikachu #klombak bit is just a shortening of binary unit, same as trit, but trit just sounds weird
yes but to the average person, and your brain
I think that is just a weird coincidental thing where a bit of something already means something, so it kind of just worked out
trit makes me think of trisomy for whatever reason
Yeah I agree
I just think its funny, and probably part of why bits sounds normal
trits probably also sounds less reasonable because of the double t
makes it weird
You never bother shortening any of the other units other than bits and nats anyways, because you'd have to shorten all of them and they are almost never used anyways
Pika, I didn't know that, but that's cool that's the origin of 'bit'
I thought it was like all the other units of measure, and there was just a John Bit once upon a time
John Binary gets the credit
it can be either
in information theory, its unit
it can be either, it depends on the context you are using
bits of information is a measure of something, so its a unit
there was a John Baud, John Hertz, etc.
most other units of measure were just some guy
idk why, I just assumed bit was the same
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey (; June 16, 1915 – July 26, 2000) was an American mathematician and statistician, best known for the development of the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm, the box plot and for laying the foundations of the field of exploratory data analysis. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivit...
en.wikipedia.organd Byte/Double/Word/etc. were all just conventions to play off of bit
that's funny Max
Replying to Spooky Phijkchu #spooky.131 and Byte/Double/Word/etc. were all just conventions to play off of bit
yes
bit is kind of the SI unit of information, and all of those are the different conversion that are useful for different things
My stupid google AI
is now including trit as a real thing
it's so over
shocker
anyways, Trit is not gaining academic prevalence at the very least spooky, so you can blame any use of it on cs people
Playing with the tritty
I am glad this includes the nat
This is going to be one of those things, that I start seeing everywhere now
isn't it
nibble is the funniest secret option
whatever that phenomenon is
a nibble is 2 bytes
