Bill Potts wrote in USMA 27966:

Unlikely. As I said before, bit is not a unit of measure. It's a discrete
element. We count bits; we do not measure them. The same is true of bytes.


Your 4.7004 bits example is impossible. There can only ever be an integral
number of on/off states.


Bill Potts, CMS


This is the strict or original definition of "bit". Rowlett, quoted by Chimpsarecute in USMA 27962, generalized the meaning of "bit" as follows:

" Somewhat more generally, the bit is used as a
logarithmic unit of data storage capacity, equal to the base-2 logarithm of
the number of possible states of the storage device or location. For
example, if a storage location stores one letter, then it has 26 possible
states, and its storage capacity is log2 26 = 4.7004 bits."


In the same line of thought we could say that 900 has 2.9542 decimal digits. I disagree with Rowlett in calling this notation "logarithmic"; I would call it "positional" as distinct from the ancient Roman notation.

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