Why is the binary number system important for computers?

Answer 1

Computers are better able to deal with information that is stored in a binary form - for example on-or-off, magnetized-or-not, pit-or-no pit (optical), rather than a range of voltages to signify the ten digits 0-9 of decimal. Similarly, processing binary information is simpler for machines.

Just like humans who communicate by verbal languages, computers communicate by numbers because these computers cannot understand verbal languages. Why computers cannot understand verbal languages? All the devices in a computer system operate with two voltage levels, high or low. Therefore, there are two states of these computer circuits, high or low or in other words logic 1 or 0. The basic level of information handling or communication is done in the above mentioned two possible states. Therefore, the basic numbering system for computers is binary or the one which has two states for each "bit" or basic information path.

So, the number system is important as the number system has to coincide with the computer system operation. There are other number systems that are in use at higher levels and are nibble (4-bits), octal (8-bits), decimal (10-bits) and hexadecimal (16-bits).