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After an initial transmission of a prime number to mark the message as artificial, Jiang’s message uses the same alien alphabet to introduce our base-10 numeral system and basic mathematics.

He also wrote a book about the Hindu numeral system, which allowed the new style of numbers to spread quickly through the Arab world—along with algorithms, the tricks for multiplying and dividing Hindu numerals quickly.

In a binary numeral system, there are only two numbers: 0 and 1.

The way modern mathematicians have defined a positional numeral system means that if the base we are using is not already understood, there is no way to communicate it using digits.

That’s the whole point of the positional numeral system!