Compare and contrast notational systems.

Question 1

Binary

Answer 1

Binary is base-2, meaning that it only uses two digits or bits. For computers, 1 is true or “on”, and 0 is false or “off”. Computers can represent numbers using binary code in the form of digital 1s and 0s inside the central processing unit (CPU) and RAM. These digital numbers are electrical signals that are either on or off inside the CPU or RAM.

Question 2

Hexadecimal

Answer 2

Hexadecimal is a base/positional number system used in mathematics and computer science. It has a base of 16 and uses 16 unique alpha-numeric symbols with the numbers zero to 9 to represent themselves and the letters A-F to represent the values 10 to 15. Hexadecimal is an easier way to represent binary values in computer systems because they significantly shorten the number of digits, as one hexadecimal digit is equivalent to four binary digits.

Question 3

Decimal

Answer 3

Decimal refers to the base-10 numbering system. It is the way humans read numbers. In general, decimal can be anything that is based on the number 10.

Question 4

ASCII

Answer 4

ASCII code allows computers to understand how to represent text. In ASCII, each character (letter, number, symbol or control character) is represented by a binary value. Extended ASCII is a version that supports representation of 256 different characters.

Question 5

Unicode

Answer 5

Unicode uses two encoding forms: 8-bit and 16-bit, based on the data type of the data that is being that is being encoded. The default encoding form is 16-bit, where each character is 16 bits (2 bytes) wide. Sixteen-bit encoding form is usually shown as U+hhhh, where hhhh is the hexadecimal code point of the character.