CS149: Elements of Computer Science Data representation
- 1. Format
(a) Computers use binary system to represent information (b) Bit = binary digit, or {0,1} (c) byte = 8 bits, kilobyte (kb) = 1024 bytes, megabyte (mb) = 10242 bytes, gigabyte = 10243 bytes
- 2. Why binary?
(a) Corresponds to levels of voltage, 0=low, 1=high (b) More intermediate levels = higher error rate (c) Rationale is underlying electronics: logic gates
- 3. Two problems:
(a) How to store and manipulate these bits? (b) How to represent information using only 0s and 1s?
January 18, 2004
Johan Bollen - http://www.cs.odu.edu/˜jbollen
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