1. Processing Data

2. How does a computer represent data?
Electronic signals or impulses
Two types of signals
Analog- Continuous waveform; Examples- talking and computerized gas pumps.
Digital- On/off electrical states (bit); Examples- light switches and transistors; Most computers use digital signals.
Digital
Analog
OFF ON ON
OFF

3. What are bits and bytes of data?
Bit (Binary digit)- On or off state of electric current; Basic unit of information; Represented by 1’s and 0’s (binary numbers).
Byte- Eight bits grouped together to represent a character (Alphabetical letters, numbers and punctuation symbols); 256 different combinations.
OFF ON OR
= 1 bit 1
= 1 Byte 1 1 1 OR
= 1 Byte 1 1

4. What are character codes?
Numerical data, that computers use, translated into characters readable by humans.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)- Eight bits; Used by minicomputers and personal computers
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC)- Eight bits; Used by mainframe computers
Unicode- Uses 16 bits; over 65,000 combinations 1
= 4 1
= A

5. What are kilobits, megabits and gigabits?
Terms that describe units of data
Used for measuring data transfer rate (bits per second). Example- 56kbps Modem
1000 bits = 1 kilobit (kb)
1,000,000 bits = 1 megabit (mb)
1,000,000,000 bits = 1 gigabit (gb)

6. What are Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes and Terabytes?
Terms that describe units of data
Used to measure data storage. Example- 20 GB hard drive
8 bits = 1Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte (KB)
1,048,576 Bytes = 1 Megabyte (MB)
1,043,741,824 Bytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)
1,099,511,627,776 Bytes = 1 Terabyte (TB)

7. THE
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