Lego computer science: representing numbers using position

Continuing a series of blogs on what to do with all that lego scattered over the floor: learn some computer science…how do we represent numbers and how is it related to the representation Charles Babbage used in his design for a Victorian steam-powered computer?

We’ve seen there are lots of ways that human societies have represented numbers and that there are many ways we could represent numbers even just using lego. Computers store numbers using a different representation again called binary. Before we get to that though we need to understand how we represent bigger numbers ourselves and why it is so useful.

Our number system was invented in India somewhere before the 4th century. It then spread, including to the west, via muslim scholars in Persia by the 9th century, so is called the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Its most famous advocate was Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. The word algorithm comes from the latin version of his name because of his book on algorithms for doing arithmetic with Hindu-arabic numbers.

The really clever thing about it is the core idea that a digit can have a different value depending on its position. In the number 555, for example, the digit 5 is representing the number five hundred, the number fifty and the number five. Those three numbers are added together to give the actual number being represented. Digit in the ‘ones’ column keep their value, those in the ‘tens’ column are ten times bigger, those in the ‘hundreds column a hundred times bigger than the digit, and so on. This was revolutionary differing from most previous systems where a different symbol was used for bigger number, and each symbol always meant the same thing. For example, in Roman numerals X is used to mean 10 and always means 10 wherever it occurs in a number. This kind of positional system wasn’t totally unique as the Babylonians had used a less sophisticated version and Archimedes also came up with a similar idea, those these systems didn’t get used elsewhere.

In the lego representations of numbers we have seen so far, to represent big numbers we would need ever more coloured blocks, or ever more different kinds of brick or ever bigger piles of bricks, to give a representation of those bigger numbers. It just doesn’t scale. However, this idea of position-valued numbers can be applied whatever the representation of digits used, not just with digits 0 to 9. So we can use the place number system to represent ever bigger numbers using our different versions of the way digits could be represented in lego. We only need symbols for the different digits, not for every number, of for every bigger numbers.

For example, if we have ten different colours of bricks to represent the 10 digits of our decimal system, we can build any number by just placing them in the right position, placing coloured bricks on a base piece.

Numbers could be variable sized or fixed size. If as above we have a base plate, and so storage space, for four digits then we can’t represent larger numbers than 9999. This is what happens with the way computers store numbers. A fixed amount of space is allocated for each number in the computer’s memory, and if a number needs more digits then we get an “overflow error” as it can’t be stored. Rockets worth millions of pounds have exploded on take-off in the past because a programmer made the mistake of trying to store numbers too big for the space allocated for them. If we want bigger numbers, we need a representation (and algorithms) that extend the size of the number if we run out of space. In lego that means our algorithm for dealing with numbers would have to include extending the grey base plate by adding a new piece when needed (and removing it when no longer needed). That then would allow us to add new digits.

Unlike when we write numbers, where we write just as many digits as we need, with fixed-sized numbers like this, we need to add zeros on the end to fill the space. There is no such thing as an empty piece of storage in a computer. Something is always there! So the number 123 is actually stored as 0123 in a fixed 4-digit representation like our lego one.

Charles Babbage made use of this idea when inventing his Victorian machines for doing computation: had they been built would have been the first computers. Driven by steam power his difference engine and analytical engine were to have digits represented by wheels with the numbers 0-9 written round the edge, linked to the positions of cog-like teeth that turned them.

Wheels were to be stacked on top of each other to represent larger numbers in a vertical rather than horizontal position system. The equivalent lego version to Babbage’s would therefore not have blocks on a base plate but blocks stacked on top of each other.

In Babbage’s machines different numbers were represented by their own column of wheels. He envisioned the analytical engine to have a room sized data store full of such columns of wheels.

So Babbage’s idea was just to use our decimal system with digits represented with wheels. Modern computers instead use binary … bit that is for next time.

This post was funded by UKRI, through grant EP/K040251/2 held by Professor Ursula Martin, and forms part of a broader project on the development and impact of computing.

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Lego Computer Science

Part of a series featuring featuring pixel puzzles,
compression algorithms, number representation,
gray code, binaryand computation.

Lego Computer Science

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Part 1: Lego Computer Science: pixel picture

Part 2: Lego Computer Science: compression algorithms

Part 3: Lego Computer Science: representing numbers

Part 4: Lego Computer Science: representing numbers using position

Part 5: Lego Computer Science: Gray code

Part 6: Lego Computer Science: Binary

Part 7: Lego Computer Science: What is computation (simple cellular automata)?