Data Encoding + Representations

Question 1

What is a bit?

Answer 1

Bit represents the state of a transistor, where each piece of information (0 or 1) is a bit

Question 2

What is a byte?

Answer 2

A byte is made up of 8 bits
Where 256 values can be stored in a byte

Question 3

Advantage of using hexadecimal over binary

Answer 3

A: Easier to read
R: 4 binary digits can be represented by 1 hexadecimal digit, thus long binary numbers can be represented with shorter strings which increases readability

Question 4

What is ASCII encoding?

Answer 4

ASCII encoding encodes 128 different symbols (usually the more common symbols such as digits/lower and upper case characters)
ASCII uses 7 bits to represent each symbol.

Question 5

What is unicode encoding?

Answer 5

Unicode can encode characters from
1. almost all langauges
2. math symbols
3. Emojis
…
Examples: UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII, thus any ascii string is also UTF-8 string

Question 6

Advantage of using Unicode over ASCII

Answer 6

Feature: Able to encode more characters of different language
A: Webpages using unicode can display more languages, allowing for more flexible designs etc

Feature: UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII
A: minimal code changes when switching from ASCII to UTF-8

Question 7

Advantage of using ASCII over unicode

Answer 7

Feature: ASCII only takes up 7bits to represent one character, which is way less than unicode
A: More efficient use of memory for simpler tasks (provided that context; does not require multi language/complex characters to be display)

Question 8

How to write answer if asked to represent decimal as binary/hex?

Answer 8

(77)₁₀ = (01001101)₂ = (4D)₁₆

Question 9

What is character encoding?

Answer 9

Character encoding refers to the set of values that define how information is stored in an electronic format