Imagine having direct input into the ending of a new book. That’s exactly the kind of exciting opportunity UT Elementary students are having with Base Ten is Best. Binary is Better., authored by Joshua Otti.
Joshua is a Ph.D. student in Theoretical Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. He also has a passion for teaching. His interests merged when he came up with the idea to write a book to teach children what binary code is and how it is used. “Binary search is a problem-solving skill that helps children learn logical thinking and efficiency,” Joshua said.
In October, Joshua and his wife, Tayvin, the book’s illustrator, visited Kameron Koeffler’s STEAM class to read their first book, Leaf’s Library, to third-grade students. The story introduces children to binary search through a narrative featuring a fairy named Leaf.
The practical application clearly made sense to students. You could hear the “oh’s!” when they started catching on to the concept. To reinforce the skill, after reading the book, Joshua and Tayvin had the students find a random number on a board using binary search.
In November, the Ottis returned to STEAM class, but this time, with a new book that had not yet been completed – Base Ten is Best. Binary is Better. That is where the Little Longhorns came in.
Base Ten is Best. Binary is Better. is a tale of competition between Base-2 and Base-10. Binary numbers, aka Base-2, is used in computer coding and only uses two digits: zero and one. This is different from the more familiar Base-10 that uses the ten digits: zero through nine.
Better understanding of binary numbers builds a strong foundation for computer coding and languages for our students. Binary is more efficient for computers because it requires fewer commands to interpret the same value, but decimal is easier for human brains to understand. A student asked Joshua why he wrote the book, and he responded: “I wanted to show other ways of counting and expose younger students to math concepts that are useful.”
After reading the book to third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes, the author offered the students alternate endings with a prompt from STEAM teacher Kameron Koeffler: “What would help all students, not just you, better understand binary numbers?” The Otti’s were surprised to see that the overwhelming and sometime unanimous decision from the students in the different grades was the ending he initially preferred.
In December 2024, Joshua published Base Ten Is Best. Binary Is Better. on Amazon, featuring the Little Longhorns’ chosen ending. His first book, Leaf’s Library, is also available on Amazon as well as stemforestbooks.com. UT Elementary students can also borrow them from our school library.
