Section 5 Flashcards
Natural Number
A positive whole number including zero.
Interger
Any whole positive or negative number including zero.
Rational number
Any number that can be expressed as a fraction or ratio of integers.
Irrational number
A number that cannot be represented as a fraction or ratio as the decimal form will contain infinite repeating values.
Real number
Any positive or negative number with or without a fractional part.
Ordinal number
A number used to identify position relative to other numbers.
Cardinal number
A number that identifies the size of something.
Well-ordered set
A group of related numbers with a defined order.
Array
A data structure where data items are grouped together under a single identifier and are then accessed based on their position.
Number base
The number of digits available within a particular number system, e.g. base 10 for decimal, base 2 for binary.
Bit
A single binary digit from a binary number - either a zero or one.
Byte
A group of bits, typically 8, used to represent a single character.
Unit
The grouping together of bits or bytes to form larger blocks of measurement, e.g. GB, MB.
Unsigned binary
Binary that represents positive numbers only.
Two’s compliment
A method of working with signed binary values.
Fixed point
Where the decimal/binary point is fixed within a number.
Floating point
Where the decimal/binary point can move within a number.
Signed binary
binary with a positive or negative sign.
Overflow
When a number is too large to be represented with the number of bits allocated.
Underflow
When a number is too small to be represented with the number of bits allocated.
Normalisation
A process for adjusting onto a common scale.
Precision
How accurate a number is.
Mantissa
The significant digits that make up a number.
Exponent
The ‘power of’ part of a number indicating how far a binary point should be shifted left or right.
