So this post is going to be all about freedom. Freedom from the oppression of the base ten system that our fingers have for centuries condemned us to!
OK yeah I'm lame whatever.

Here's the question: How high can you count on your fingers? Strictly speaking, most people can count up to 10, although if you can keep it in your head, some people can get up to about 30.

I can count to 1023 on my fingers, because I count using binary.

I know the word "binary" is going to scare people because they think of the matrix and the long streams of 1s and 0s, but that's not what I'm talking about. All the math required to do this is the ability to multiply by 2 and do some addition. The addition does get a little bit complicated, but the great thing is that you can still just count as high as you can add it up.

Fingers are inherently binary- they can encode either a 1 or a 0 by pointing or not. And since you have 10 fingers, you can count up to 2^10 - 1 = 1023 on your fingers if you use binary- at the very least you can count up to 31 on one hand.
Because binary is base 2, each digit (haha...digit...) is worth some power of two. The first is worth 2^0=1, then 2^1=2, 2^2=4, 2^3=8, and 2^4=16 for the first hand. Therefore, if each finger is "ON" (pointing, or worth 1) then you add up all five numbers...1+2+4+8+16=31


So here's the technique...hold your right hand with your palm facing you and all fingers in. This is 0 (00000). Put your thumb out for 1 (00001). Each finger corresponds to the 1 or 0 in its place in five digit number. (pinky ring middle index thumb). To count, the technique is always the same. Find the rightmost finger that is OFF (not pointing) and put it ON (pointing). At the same time, turn all the fingers to the right of that finger off. Repeat...
0-00000
1-00001
2-00010
3-00011
4-00100
5-00101
6-00110
7-00111
8-01000
etc...
Again, the digits are worth... 16-8-4-2-1

So have fun. If you have any questions, post me some comments. Otherwise, just don't be overzealous with #4 or else you might find yourself in a bar fight!