Because it’s a power of 2… It’s embarrassing you’re even asking this. Obviously we wouldn’t use 11 bits per byte because that’s nonsense. Why don’t we use 4 b

Because it’s a power of 2… It’s embarrassing you’re even asking this. Obviously we wouldn’t use 11 bits per byte because that’s nonsense. Why don’t we use 4 bits? Because that’s like saying you could only write 2 digits for decimal numbers and never more. That’s not enough digits for practical use. I don’t want to have to write every single number as 10 pairs of two digits when I could just use numbers of a practical length.