It is A Binary Earth - How Computers Count.

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You get to the checkout at the industry, and the product you ordered 'on special' pops up at the total price. The director must be called to fix it up, and what does he say?

'We have now been having issues with the computer, it gets the incorrect price on some things.'

You put in a summary of addressess to your Word processor, and print off party invitations for...

Their computer has been cursed by many for taking things too literally! It is easy-to blame the computer when some thing goes wrong.

You reach the checkout at the industry, and the product you ordered 'on special' pops up at the full cost. The manager needs to be called to fix it up, and what does he say?

'We have been having issues with the computer, it gets the wrong value o-n some issues.'

You devote a list of addressess to your Word processor, and print off party invitations for next week. You then discover that today's date is inserted in the signature block - from the computer!

Maybe you have heard the term 'Garbage in Garbage out'? Some body, at some time directed the computer to do what it did, It didn't choose to mess you up intentionally. Computers can only do what they're told, they are more rational than Spock and they take everything literally.

We are going to examine why they are therefore pedantic!

The entire world around us has many elements which work-in the same way as a computer. There are lots of examples of opposites, for example Up and Down, Left and Right, Forwards and Backwards. A light may be O-n or Off, maybe it's Night or Day. Yes or No? You are able to think about many others. This process of two possible states is called a Binary System, if it is not just one, it must be the other.

A computer uses the Binary System to perform all its features, the basic unit, actually a vacuum tube, then a transistor, then a processor, is employed tens of thousands of times up to make the total unit. The light being On or Off which we mentioned above is controlled by way of a move. Within the computer this switch is just a transistor, which will be either On or Off.

Now we arrive at the [e xn y]! Do not fear, it is quite simple Math! In fact it's therefore simple we just count up to at least one. That is right, we can only have two states therefore we count from 0 to 1. (That is another thing computers are pedantic about, they insist o-n starting at zero).

The Binary system can be a Number System. You're acquainted with the system which has 1-0 numerals 0 to 9 (think such as for instance a computer 0 comes first). You could make up all sorts of number systems for whatever purpose you need. You almost certainly know about a dozen (12) and also have heard of a half dozen. If you've applied your computer much you may have run into the Hexadecimal program. That one has 16 'numbers' 0-9and A-F. Yet another number system employed by computer people could be the Octal system which includes 8 numbers, 0-7.

Ok so how do we depend with only 0 and 1. Simple, in the same way you count in decimal. The first ten numbers are OK, 0-9, but what next? We start again but add in a 1 making 10 or 'one, zero.' That gets us to 'one, nine' and we head to 'two, zero', and so o-n around 'nine, nine' then we again put in a 1 to make 10-0 - 'one, zero, zero.'

It is much easier, if you have followed me to date you're ready for your Binary sequence. Starting at zero we have 0,1 - and that is it. We follow the same rule and include a 1, creating 'one,zero.' Next come 'one, one'; then 'one, zero, zero'; -'one, zero, one'; and so on. These are equal to Decimal 0,1,2,3,4,5. How does this relate to computers? That is next.

In our computer we have transistor switches, as described above. For the math case we just looked over, we need 3 buttons. These each signify a Binary Digit, or Bit. These buttons will be OFF,OFF,ON or 001, to represent a Decimal 1. For a Decimal 5 we'd have ON,OFF,ON, or 101. By extension you can observe that with 4 turns we could visit 1111 or 15 Decimal.

Yet another point to note is the fact that each binary digit, or bit, has a value. If you are concerned with video, you will maybe hate to check up about rockwell trading. Just like in Decimal we've devices, hundreds, hundreds, and so forth. in Binary the values are 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 etc. An such like. The binary code 1111 stated earlier is therefore 1+2+4+8=15. You might add-up the average person values, if you wanted to workout what binary 100101100 was in decimal. In reality individuals who work with the basic devices need to know 'device rule'! In their mind 1111 will be F in Hexadecimal or 17 in octal.

This probably seems a very long-winded approach to work-out figures, until you understand that these 'changes' can operate at nanosecond pace or 1,000,000,000 times per minute, large calculations become possible.

Thats probably enough to consume in a single go. Next time we will examine how a computer adds and multiplies..