I have a string of 1s and 0s that represents a binary number (e.g. '00101101'). How would I convert that to an actual num? If I use int(), Python assumes decimal and creates a number that's much ...

But, for medium size numbers, the system switches over to binary. The Mangarevans had special words for 10, 20, 40, and 80 — the first few powers of two, multiplied by ten.

But for numbers 20 through 80, they used a binary system, with separate, one-word terms for 20, 40 and 80. For really large numbers, they used powers of 10 up to at least 10 million.

They find that the former Mangarevans combined base-10 representation with a binary system. They had number words for 1 to 10, and then for 10 multiplied by several powers of 2.

The binary system can represent any number using a string of 1s and 0s. Though it is used by computers today, it was first described by the 17th century mathematician Gottfried Leibniz.