Ternary numeral system

Comparison to other radices

Representations of integer numbers in ternary do not get uncomfortably lengthy as quickly as in binary. For example, decimal 365 corresponds to binary 101101101 (9 digits) and to ternary 111112 (six digits). However, they are still far less compact than the corresponding representations in bases such as decimal – see below for a compact way to codify ternary using nonary and septemvigesimal.

As for rational numbers, ternary offers a convenient way to represent 1/3 (as opposed to its cumbersome representation as an infinite string of recurring digits in decimal); but a major drawback is that, in turn, ternary does not offer a finite representation for 1/2 (neither for 1/4, 1/8, etc.), because 2 is not a prime factor of the base; as with base-2, 1/10 is not representable exactly (that would need e.g. base-10); nor is 1/6.

Sum of the digits in ternary as opposed to binary

The value of a binary number with n bits that are all 1 is 2ⁿ − 1.

Similarly, for a number N(b, d) with base b and d digits, all of which are the maximal digit value b − 1, we can write:

N(b, d) = (b − 1) b^d−1 + (b − 1) b^d−2 + … + (b − 1) b¹ + (b − 1) b⁰, N(b, d) = (b − 1) (b^d−1 + b^d−2 + … + b¹ + 1), N(b, d) = (b − 1) M. bM = b^d + b^d−1 + … + b² + b¹, and −M = −b^d−1 − b^d−2 − … − b¹ − 1, so bM − M = b^d − 1, or M = (b^d − 1)/(b − 1).

Then

N(b, d) = (b − 1)M, N(b, d) = (b − 1) (b^d − 1)/(b  − 1), and N(b, d) = b^d − 1.

For a three-digit ternary number, N(3, 3) = 3³ − 1 = 26 = 2 × 3² + 2 × 3¹ + 2 × 3⁰ = 18 + 6 + 2.

Compact ternary representation: base-9 and -27

Nonary (base-9, each digit is two ternary digits) or septemvigesimal (base-27, each digit is three ternary digits) can be used for compact representation of ternary, similar to how octal and hexadecimal systems are used in place of binary.

Practical usage

A base-three system is used in Islam to keep track of counting Tasbih to 99 or to 100 on a single hand for counting prayers (as alternative for the Misbaha).

In certain analog logic, the state of the circuit is often expressed ternary. This is most commonly seen in Transistor–transistor logic using 7406 open collector logic. The output is said to either be low (grounded), high, or open (high-Z). In this configuration the output of the circuit is actually not connected to any voltage reference at all. Where the signal is usually grounded to a certain reference, or at a certain voltage level, the state is said to be high impedance because it is open and serves its own reference. Thus, the actual voltage level is sometimes unpredictable.

A rare "ternary point" is used to denote fractional parts of an inning in baseball. Since each inning consists of three outs, each out is considered one third of an inning and is denoted as .1. For example, if a player pitched all of the 4th, 5th and 6th innings, plus 2 outs of the 7th inning, his Innings pitched column for that game would be listed as 3.2, meaning 3⅔. In this usage, only the fractional part of the number is written in ternary form.

Ternary numbers can be used to convey self-similar structures like the Sierpinski triangle or the Cantor set conveniently. Additionally, it turns out that the ternary representation is useful for defining the Cantor set and related point sets, because of the way the Cantor set is constructed. The Cantor set consists of the points from 0 to 1 that have a ternary expression that does not contain any instance of the digit 1. Any terminating expansion in the ternary system is equivalent to the expression that is identical up to the term preceding the last non-zero term followed by the term one less than the last nonzero term of the first expression, followed by an infinite tail of twos. For example: .1020 is equivalent to .1012222... because the expansions are the same until the "two" of the first expression, the two was decremented in the second expansion, and trailing zeros were replaced with trailing twos in the second expression.

Ternary is the integer base with the highest radix economy, followed closely by binary and quaternary. It has been used for some computing systems because of this efficiency. It is also used to represent three-option trees, such as phone menu systems, which allow a simple path to any branch.

A form of redundant binary representation called balanced ternary or signed-digit representation is sometimes used in low-level software and hardware to accomplish fast addition of integers because it can eliminate carries.

Binary-coded ternary

Simulation of ternary computers using binary computers, or interfacing between ternary and binary computers, can involve use of binary-coded ternary (BCT) numbers, with two bits used to encode each trit. BCT encoding is analogous to binary-coded decimal encoding. If the trit values 0, 1 and 2 are encoded 00, 01 and 10, conversion in either direction between binary-coded ternary and binary can be done in logarithmic time. A library of C code supporting BCT arithmetic is available.

Tryte

Some ternary computers such as the Setun defined a tryte to be six trits or approximately 9.5 bit (holding more information than the de facto binary byte).