In the binary numbering system, a binary number such as 101100101 is expressed with a string of “1’s” and “0’s” with each digit along the string from right to left having a value twice that of the previous digit. But as it is a binary digit it can only have a value of either “1” or “0” therefore, q is equal to “2” (0 or 1) with its position indicating its weight within the string.
As the decimal number is a weighted number, converting from decimal to binary (base 10 to base 2) will also produce a weighted binary number with the right-hand most bit being the Least Significant Bit or LSB, and the left-hand most bit being the Most Significant Bit or MSB, and we can represent this as:
Representation of a Binary Number
| MSB | Binary Digit | LSB | ||||||
| 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | 24 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 20 |
| 256 | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Divide by 2
The Divide by 2 algorithm assumes that we start with an integer greater than 0. A simple iteration then continually divides the decimal number by 2 and keeps track of the remainder. The first division by 2 gives information as to whether the value is even or odd. An even value will have a remainder of 0. It will have the digit 0 in the ones place. An odd value will have a remainder of 1 and will have the digit 1 in the ones place. We think about building our binary number as a sequence of digits; the first remainder we compute will actually be the last digit in the sequence.