Unary numeral system
Base-1 numeral system / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The unary numeral system is the simplest numeral system to represent natural numbers:[1] to represent a number N, a symbol representing 1 is repeated N times.[2]
In the unary system, the number 0 (zero) is represented by the empty string, that is, the absence of a symbol. Numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... are represented in unary as 1, 11, 111, 1111, 11111, 111111, ...[3]
Unary is a bijective numeral system. However, because the value of a digit does not depend on its position, it is not a form of positional notation, and it is unclear whether it would be appropriate to say that it has a base (or "radix") of 1, as it behaves differently from all other bases. [citation needed]
The use of tally marks in counting is an application of the unary numeral system. For example, using the tally mark | (𝍷), the number 3 is represented as |||. In East Asian cultures, the number 3 is represented as 三, a character drawn with three strokes.[4] (One and two are represented similarly.) In China and Japan, the character 正, drawn with 5 strokes, is sometimes used to represent 5 as a tally.[5][6]
Unary numbers should be distinguished from repunits, which are also written as sequences of ones but have their usual decimal numerical interpretation.