Help needed please

[Steven18]

Please could somebody help me with this, im really lost and don't know when to start

1. Explain how, by use of the binary system, positive integer numbers are stored on digital computers, and explain why binary is used rather than any other base system.

2. What methods are available to store negative numbers? Which method is mainly used today and why? Are the other methods used at all – if so where?

3. Describe two ways of storing real numbers. Under what circumstances are they used?

Many Thanks,

Steven

 

[Gigabite]

Binary numbers is just 1s and 0s. So for example, something would be 001011010110. Everything is stored as that basically, except most things have thousands and millions of binary codes. Even keyboard numbers and letters have binary codes. So A really isn't stored as A on a hard drive. It's stored as a binary number. Same goes for everything else on pcs. I don't really know why that's used more than hex systems or such, but it's probably because it's simpler.

For numbers, if I type 5, that's probably some binary code that computer can convert into 5. Because for a computer, 5 isn't really a 5 it's some binary code. Same for negatives.

I know for audio, the computer takes samples of the song, and gives it a binary code to represent that. Which basically has hertz, and all other stuff.

 

[raross]

Please could somebody help me with this, im really lost and don't know when to start

1. Explain how, by use of the binary system, positive integer numbers are stored on digital computers, and explain why binary is used rather than any other base system.

2. What methods are available to store negative numbers? Which method is mainly used today and why? Are the other methods used at all – if so where?

3. Describe two ways of storing real numbers. Under what circumstances are they used?

Many Thanks,

Steven

1. Same as he said as binary digits. Binary was originally used in computing because they can represent +5 volts with a 1 and -5 volts with a 0. Now they could and HAVE engineered microprocessers that use for instance 16 levels of voltage with a volt regulator that determines the actual value. Same with other bases, the only disadvantage is its a lot more to convert and realize. But everything else is an advantage.

2. To store negative numbers they have a bit at the very beginning that determines if it's positive or negative. However there are literly thousands of different schemes to store negative numbers but I think the one they have adopted gives the best results.

3. Storing floating point numbers is basically exactly the same as everything else.